this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Hello selfhosted! Sometimes I have to transfer big files or a large amounts of small files in my homelab. I used rsync but specifying the IP address and the folders and everything is bit fiddly. I thought about writing a bash script but before I do that I wanted to ask you about your favourite way to achieve this. Maybe I am missing out on an awesome tool I wasn't even thinking about.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

What's wrong with rsync? If you don't like IP addresses, use a domain name. If you use certificate authentication, you can tab complete the folders. It's a really nice UX IMO.

If you'll do this a lot, just mount the target directory with sshfs or NFS. Then use rsync or a GUI file manager.

[–] grumuk@lemmy.ml 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I never even set up DNS for things that aren't public facing. I just keep /etc/hosts updated everywhere and ssh/scp/rsync things around using their non-fqdn hostnames.

You could also use mDNS to the same effect.

[–] motsu@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago

smb share if its desktop to desktop. If its from phone to PC, I throw it on nextcloud on the phone, then grab it from the web ui on pc.

Smb is the way to go if you have identity set up, since your PC auth will carry over for the connection to the smb share. Nextcloud will be less typing if not since you can just have persistent auth on the app / web.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not gonna lie, I just map a network share and copy and paste through the gui.

[–] Flamangoman@leminal.space 5 points 1 day ago

Same lol, somebody please enlighten me on a faster way!

[–] theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Sounds very straight forward. Do you have a samba docker container running on your server or how do you do that?

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 15 hours ago

Set up smb on my file share VM.
My dedicated docker host accesses it through an NFS mount.

[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I just type sftp://[ip, domain or SSH alias] into my file manager and browse it as a regular folder

[–] tacocatgoat@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Linux is truly extensible and it is the part I both love and struggle to explain the most.
I can sit at my desktop, developing code that physically resides on my server and interact with it from my laptop. This does not require any strange janky setup, it's just SSH. It's extensible.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I love this so much. When I first switched to Linux, being able to just list a bunch of server aliases along with the private key references in my .ssh/config made my life SO much easier then the redundantly maintained and hard to manage putty and winscp configurations in Windows.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago

Any file manager on Linux supports this

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

I have two servers, one Mac and one Windows. For the Mac I just map directly to the smb share, for the Windows it's a standard network share. My desktop runs Linux and connects to both with ease.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

I dont have a docker container, I just have Samba running on the server itself.

I do have an owncloud container running, which is mapped to a directory. And I have that shared out through samba so I can access it through my file manager. But that's unnecessary because owncloud is kind of trash.

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 13 points 1 day ago

People have already covered most of the tools I typically use, but one I haven't seen listed yet that is sometimes convenient is python3 -m http.server which runs a small web server that shares whatever is in the directory you launched it from. I've used that to download files onto my phone before when I didn't have the right USB cables/adapters handy as well as for getting data out of VMs when I didn't want to bother setting up something more complex.

[–] linuxguy@lemmy.gregw.us 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] Sunbutt23@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Checks username… yeah that tracks

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

SCP, the protocol, is deprecated. scp, the command, just uses the SFTP protocol these days. I find its syntax convenient.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh does it? I didn't realize that. I've just switched over to rsync completely.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Since OpenSSH version 9.0, so like mid '22. So as long as you're not running something more out of date than that.

[–] harsh3466@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago
[–] boreengreen@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

rsync is indeed fiddly. Consider SFTP in your GUI of choice. I mount the folder I need in my file browser and grab the files I need. No terminal needed and I can put the folders as favorites in the side bar.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you want to use the terminal though, there is scp which is supported on both windows and Linux.

Its just scp [file to copy] [username]@[server IP]:[remote location]

[–] CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's essentially the same as rsync

Just slower if you already have some of the files there.

[–] lemmylommy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

WinSCP for editing server config

Rsync for manual transfers over slow connections

ZFS send/receive for what it was meant for

Samba for everything else that involves mounting on clients or other servers.

[–] Mosfar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago
[–] jaek@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Magic wormhole is pretty dead simple https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html#installation

I use this a lot at work for moving stuff between different test vms, as you don't need to check IPs/hostnames

[–] boreengreen@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As I understand it, the establishing of the connection is reliant on a relay server. So this would not work on a local network without a relay server and would, by default, try to reach a server on the internet to make connections.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ye old samba share.

But I do like using Nextcloud. I use it for syncing my video projects so I can pick up where I left off on another computer.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Samba Bamba!!

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
  • sftp for quick shit like config files off a random server because its easy and is on by default with sshd in most distros
  • rsync for big one-time moves
  • smb for client-facing network shares
  • NFS for SAN usage (mostly storage for virtual machines)

Syncthing and/or ftp.

[–] node815@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I work from home, however my two systems (home and work) are on the same LAN, they don't see each other for file sharing. I get paid via direct deposit like everyone else which means my pay stubs are all electronic. I print those out and then use WinSCP to copy those over to my desktop. No other files are ever sent.

At home, depending on the amount of files, I either use SFTP via Filezilla, or if the mood strikes me and for a single file, I will just use SCP if I'm already on the cli which is most of the time it seems anymore doing work on my personal servers. I've found that SFTP is faster at transferring than doing a copy/paste to the NFS share to the same drive.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

As a lazy person, I just prefer sftp on thunar.

[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

rclone. I have a few helper functions;

fn mount { rclone mount http: X: --network-mode }
fn kdrama {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/KDrama/$x --filter-from
~/.config/filter.txt }
fn tv {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/TV/$x --filter-from ~/.config/filter.txt }
fn downloads {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/Downloads/$x --filter-from ~/.config/filter.txt }

So I download something to my seedbox, then use rclone lsd http: to get the exact name of the folder/files, and run tv "filename" and it runs my function. Pulls all the files (based on filter.txt) using multiple threads to the correct folder on my NAS. Works great, and maxes out my connection.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd say use something like zeroconf(?) for local computer names. Or give them names in either your dns forwarder (router), hosts file or ssh config. Along with shell autocompletion, that might do the job. I use scp, rsync and I have a NFS share on the NAS and some bookmarks in Gnome's file manager, so i just click on that or type in scp or rsync with the target computer's name.

[–] MasterBlaster@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

By "homelab", do you mean your local network? I tend to use shared folders, kdeconnect, or WebDAV.

I like WebDAV, which i can activate on Android with DavX5 and Material Files, and i use it for Joplin.

Nice thing about this setup is that i also have a certificate secured OpenVPN, so in a pinch i can access it all remotely when necessary by activating that vpn, then disconnecting.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

rsync if it's a from/to I don't need very often

More common transfer locations are done via NFS

[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Resilion Sync

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

I have a shared syncthing folder on all my devices

[–] aeno@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago
[–] ptz@dubvee.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Depends on what I'm transferring and to/from where:

  • scp is my go-to since I'm a Linux household and have SSH keys setup and LDAP SSO as a fallback
  • sshfs if I'm too lazy to connect via SMB/NFS (or I don't feel like installing the tools for them) or I'm traversing a WAN
  • rsync for bulk transfer and backups
  • Snapdrop/Pairdrop for one-off file/text shares between devices with GUIs (mostly phone <--> PC)
  • SMB if I'm on a client PC and need to work with the files directly from the fileserver
  • NFS between servers
  • To get bulk data to my phone (e.g. updating my music library), I connect via USB in MTP mode and copy from the server via SMB or sshfs.