Then, there is Opera United ;)

this is exactly why I always install Cygwin + openSSH on every Windows box I touch…

I just tried it on my linux box and it worked perfectly.. Using the browser on my linux box.

Would this bypass a firewall on the router of my home network? I don’t administer this router but I’d still like to be able to access it from another computer, anywhere in the world.

@ mcai8sh4:

Did not notice the -U option on Woof. Thanks!

@ IceBrain:

Yep, that’s usually the easiest way to do this. Sometimes it doesn’t work tat nicely due to lack of admin privileges on the machine or a locked down firewall that will block access to network shares.

Also, have you ever tried to have a completely clueless person try to add a network share? It usually goes like this:

1. Tell them to type in \\ipaddress\share into the address bar
2. Realize the address bar is disabled in Explorer by default
4. Instead of enabling it, show them the ‘Mount Network Drive’ method
5. Realize they have a firewall that is blocking the connection
6. Ask them about the firewall
7. Explain what a firewall is and how it would have an icon in the task bar
8. Watch the person fumble around their desktop looking for that elusive “Symtex” or “MyCoffee” icon
9. Get annoyed, walk over and do it for them

HTTP has the advantage of being easy and never hindered by firewalls – you just email the person a link and it works.

Meh, I’d just create a network share. It’s built-in in Windows and I keep Samba installed on Linux. I just need to add three lines to /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[SHARE_NAME]
path = /path/to/dir
public = yes

And then I do /etc/init.d/samba start, and tell the person to add a network share and write “\\my_ip\share_name”

There’s two advantages:
1) They can send multiples files or a whole folder without having to send each file separately or zip/unzip them.
2) It actually has a progress bar and an approximation of the remaining time (which browsers should have a long time ago).

Of course, if I was controlling both PCs myself I would just use rsync, it works on Windows too.

I’ve been using woof and droopy for a while now – and find them amazingly useful. Woof also allows you to set the number of times to share the file before it shuts down! Also if you want to share a directory, then ‘woof ~/stuff/’ will automatically zip (or tar…) the directory and share that.

After reading this post I thought I’d check to see if there are any updates… and yes there are – using ‘woof -U’ allows people to upload files to you (exactly what droopy does!)

I also learnt about the SimpleHTTPServer recently (from our friendly host, Luke) and found that using ‘python -m SimpleHTTPServer 9009 >> .webserve_log 2>&1 &’ runs it in the background and creates a log file of accesses called .webserve_log. Set this as an alias (in a real OS) and there you have a very easy way to share you’re current dir, whilst still being able to use your current shell.

That’s pretty handy. Bookmarked for future reference.