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from the questions,-questions,-questions dept.
I'm putting this under security because i'd like to keep this a private server for family:
that said, I'm wondering if you fine people can help me with the best way to set up a web server in my house to host the files on my external hard drives for family members in other cities/countries while, again, keeping it private and secure over the internet.
I'm looking into ngrok for url handling, but am not sure exactly if this is the best way to go.
Can anyone save me time and possible heartache and failure and provide me (and possibly others) with a walk-through of which software to use. Would love to do something like free, but may have to get a paid unique domain from, say, ngrok, to make it easier for family members to connect up.
Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi... you're my only hope!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:45PM (9 children)
This approach works pretty well and is difficult to fuck up:
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @09:54PM (3 children)
Add to this that you use a firewall to block everything except the SSH traffic to your SSH server (and any pings ngrok may require). Don't want to have to worry about anything else the box might be listening to.
Of course, SSH tunneling is not for non-technical users, unless you want to support unusual and possibly written-by-you software to do it for them.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @10:19PM (2 children)
With openssh it's one flag to enable the proxy and with putty it's simply a matter clicking the appropriate option when connecting. Nothing especially technical about it.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday January 20 2018, @03:32PM (1 child)
And double-entry accounting is really nothing but addition and subtraction, which every 6-year old is taught in school.
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WELCOME TO THE tour ladies and gentlemen, above we have two statements which, while strictly true, are unhelpful and misleading, and which tend to derail, not contribute to, developing and furthering community discussion.
The first, because it assumes "once you've mastered SSH, Putty, and the concepts that make the Internet work," something most people would struggle to do, especially when they often don't know the difference between Office, Windows, and Microsoft itself, or a browser, Google, and the Internet itself.
The second, because often, six year olds, while able to add and subtract, would need to know intimately a similarly complex system of accounts and practices into which that addition and subtraction must fit.
Thank you for coming: the exit is here through the gift shop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:55PM
You are right, double entry accounting is not particularly difficult either. But understanding of negative numbers is probably a prerequisite, and I don't think that's usually taught at a first grade level.
Logging into a server with putty is not fucking rocket science. I would expect most people can manage to do it if they are not total morons, especially if you show them. Oh hey, then you can save the server settings for them and they just need to click the thing!
(Score: 1) by weregeek on Friday January 19 2018, @11:04PM (1 child)
If there's only a need to share files, and SSH is used to secure the transit, why not just use an SFTP client to connect directly to the SSH service and transfer files?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:30AM
Because the OP specifically asked for a web server.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday January 20 2018, @12:21AM (2 children)
Don't use SSH. If you want this type of approach, set up a VPN with OpenVPN.
The next problem is how do your users find your home network IP address? Assuming it is dynamic, you need some kind of dynamic DNS setup.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)
Why?
But that would likely be a lot more work to configure. Especially if you don't want to route your relatives' complete traffic through your home network hosting the private server.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday January 22 2018, @08:07PM
OpenVPN is very easy to configure.
OpenVPN doesn't do this. It merely creates a tunnel. What you pass through the tunnel is up to other processes.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory