cargohold

cargohold lets you distribute and receive files on your own terms. Create private links that let other people upload files to you, or send them a link that lets them download or view the files you want them to have.

Installation

Required dependencies

• nginx
• uwsgi
• uwsgi-plugin-python3
• sqlite3
• python3
• python3-jinja2
• python3-passlib if using LocalBasicAuth

Basic infrastructure

• Create a directory where cargohold will store the uploaded files
• Set the directory's owner to the user you want uwsgi to run the application under
• Edit backend/config.py to match your setup
• Edit configs/nginx.config to match your setup
  • Note that the client_max_body_size directive will limit the maximum size of a single uploaded file
• Install configs/nginx.config to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
• Edit configs/uwsgi.ini to match your setup
  • Note that the limit-post option will limit the maximum size of a single uploaded file
• Install configs/uwsgi.ini to /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled/

Initial configuration

• Create the cargohold database by running sqlite3 cargohold.db3 < backend/cargohold.sql
• Update backend/config.py with the path to your database
• If you want to use the web administration interface, select an authentication provider in backend/config.py. Some providers might need additional configuration. See the section on Authentication for more details. TBD: Extend this.

Usage

The database stores the the following data for each alias

• Alias: The identifier to be appended to the base URL
• User: The user the identifier belongs to, for administrative and storage accounting purposes
• Real path: The on-disk directory name where, when prepended with both the fileroot and optionally, the userdir, the data is stored. Multiple aliases may point to the same real path.
• Access level: The access level this alias permits to the real path. A string consisting of any of the characters c (Create / Upload), r (Retrieve / Read), u (Update), d (Delete) in any order.
• Storage limit: Per-alias storage limit (applied when uploading)
• Display mode: Parameter to the file-listing interface, customizing end-user layout.

The storage limit for each alias (applied when uploading files) is calculated as the minimum of the following parameters

• Global disk free space
• global_limit in backend/config.py
• The per-user limit minus the disk size currently used by the user, if the per-user limit is not 0
• The per-alias limit minus the disk size currently used by the files in the alias, if the per-alias limit is not 0 / NULL

Interface

cargohold integrates somewhat tightly with nginx using the X-Accel-Redirect mechanism. Other httpds may provide a similar mechanism, which will need to be called out to in the playout() routine in main.py.

Authentication

TBD