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Comment by sgbeal | Hacker News Reader

It's also a trivial way to set up an ad-hoc ftp server which serves either local or cloud storage. e.g. my Pi4 runs an rclone ftp server which exposes my dropbox to the rest of my intranet, and a separate ftp server which my networked printer can save scans to. The same machine uses rclone to run automated backups of cloud storage for my household and a close friend. rclone is a godsend for my intranet.

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And then all you need to do is use a trivial curlftpfs to have a synchronized folder available. Dropbox is not needed anymore ?

Oh wow I didn't know about this! Good tip

Do you mind explaining why it's so trivial versus setting up traditional ftp? I'm missing something.

Thank you

> Do you mind explaining why it's so trivial versus setting up traditional ftp?

    nohup /usr/bin/rclone serve ftp --addr MYIP:2121 $PWD &>/dev/null &

No configuration needed (beyond rclone's per-cloud-storage-account config (noting that serving local dirs this way does not require any cloud storage config)) and some variation of that can be added to crontab like:

    @reboot /usr/bin/sleep 30 && ...the above command...

Noting that $PWD can be a cloud drive identifier (part of the rclone config) so it can proxy a remote cloud service this same way. So, for example:

    rclone serve ftp --addr MYIP:2121 mydropbox:

assuming "mydropbox" is the locally-configured name for your rclone dropbox connection, that will serve your whole dropbox.

Just write a systemd unit. These commands are not any easier to support and are far worse from the purely technical point of view. You'll get:

- startup only when the network is up

- proper logging

- automatic restarts on failure

- optional protection for your ssh keys and other data if there's a breach (refer to `systemd-analyze security`)

Run:

  $ systemctl --user edit --full --force rclone-ftp.service

this opens a text editor; paste these lines:

  [Unit]
  After=network-online.target
  Wants=network-online.target

  [Install]
  WantedBy=default.target

  [Service]
  ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone --your-flags /directory

and then enable and start the service:

  $ systemctl --user enable --now rclone-ftp

Seriously yes. Crontab isn't meant to keep your services up. We have a proper service manager now, out with the hacks.

People go out of their way to build their own crappy version of systemd.

systemd is far from perfect, and Poettering is radically anti-user. But it's the best we got and it serves us well

> Poettering is radically anti-user

What does that mean?

One of the authors of systemd

I know who he is but don't understand how he's supposed to be "anti-user".

Can traditional FTP talk to Dropbox?

Assuming the Dropbox is synchronized somewhere to your file system, the FTP server could serve that directory. Although I guess not everyone synchronizes their Dropbox locally.

> Although I guess not everyone synchronizes their Dropbox locally.

And i've yet to see a pi-native dropbox client for doing so.

PS: i actually do sync dropbox to my main workstation but selectively do so. The lion's share of my dropbox is stuff i don't need locally so don't bother to sync it. The rclone approach gives me easy access to the whole dropbox, when needed, from anywhere in my intranet, and i can use my local file manager instead of the dropbox web interface.

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