Cubby - Open Source File Sharing

nebulon

Hi All,

One of the most popular use cases on Cloudron is file sharing. Currently, our users are using a variety of apps for this already including Nextcloud, Surfer, Syncthing, Jirafeu, FilePizza etc. While Nextcloud is fantastic, we have found it can be hard to administer over time. Their focus on extensibility (apps) means that end users unwittingly install many apps and are often left with broken setup after an update. Surfer's current target is static file hosting and we want to leave it that way. Syncthing focuses on file syncing and less on collaboration. Jirafeu/FilePizza are "file drop" solutions.

As a logical next step, we looked into other existing self-hosted file sharing apps like Seafile. However, they didn't cleanly fit into the Cloudron use case. Seafile, for example, has it's own file data store and does not work directly with the files in the file system.

With this in mind, we started working on a simple file sharing app, a couple of months ago. Some of our requirements for this project are:

100% Open Source - Licensed as AGPL. Currently, the development is entirely funded by the revenue we make from Cloudron. By making it open source, we hope to have an active community help us move development forward. If there is a need, we might sell support licenses.
Painless selfhosting installation and maintanence - this is the primary design goal. We want hassle-free install and updates both with and without Cloudron.
Batteries included - like with Cloudron, our approach is not have plugins and extensions. We bake features into the product. The primary use case for Cubby is file sharing and we won't add features like caldav, note taking etc into the product.
Modern dev stack - node.js and vue.js
Internal (team) file shares and External (public) file share links
File viewers and editing. Collabora and OnlyOffice integration, monaco editor (the one visualstudio code is using), ...
Syncing - Webdav sync. This will make it work with existing desktop and mobile sync clients.

The code is now in a pre-alpha state. We have already published it in the App Store and you can already try it on Cloudron. Blog, Website, Docs are all being worked on and should appear in the coming weeks.

Again, don't use this for anything production yet but we will greatly appreciate any feedback. If you have any issues, please open a GitHub issue.

Just a small screenshot teaser:

scooke

Way to go! I like the Webdav component.

atridad

I'll run this in parallel with nextcloud to see if I can ditch it alltogether. Nicely done guys!

In think the only thing I'd miss is the next cloud integration with PopOS

girish

@atrilahiji It will take a bit to get there to replace nextcloud itself but would be great to just get some feedback on what features are needed to replace it. Feel free to open feature requests on GitHub directly.

girish

I created a new app section now - https://forum.cloudron.io/category/132/cubby

atridad

@girish Went ahead and added some requests. Are you and @nebulon open to contributions?

I am definitely quite invested in this so sorry for the insane number of issues! I'm sure some of these are things you already had in mind but I figured it might as well be tracked.

nebulon

@atrilahiji no worries this is great, a lot of things are in vague states or not yet fully wired up in the UI. But with the issues I can work through them one by one.

atridad

@nebulon Hahaha perfect. Since its fairly early in the development of this app, I might try to take a look and see if I don't get overwhelmed trying to contribute and knock some of those off too. Thankfully I mostly work with Vue

girish

@atrilahiji Yes, of course, contributions welcome. That's why it's opensource. Feel free to open PRs as well! Currently, lots of basic docs like install instructions etc is lacking, but it will come

Until 5 years ago, Cubby was the name of a proprietary LogMeIn app with a similar purpose. Hopefully, you guys won't have problems with IP rights.

https://alternativeto.net/software/cubby/about/

girish

@hillside502 Oh, thanks for pointing that out! Something to keep in mind before we launch this for reals.

atridad

Name suggestion: "Fileron"

atridad

My hope for this is to eventually replace Nextcloud for file storage. And move to Cubby for files, SoGO for email/cal/contacts, and so on. Moving away from one app that does everything kind of ok to multiple good specialized apps.

scooke

Today I went to install Cubby. As I scrolled down to its place in the App Store I coudn't help but compare everyone else's logos/icons with the plain file folder icon of Cubby. You probably are planning to create a more stand-out logo/icon for it, so here is a suggestion:

Rather than creating a derivative of YAFF (yet another file folder), take the existing Cloudron logo and turn that into a file folder-looking image. I suppose with the angles it might end up looking more like a partially open door, if it stays vertical. You'd have to tilt it forward somewhat in order to get the darker background "folder" effect.

And further along those lines, if you have more custom made Cloudron apps, each could be a variation of the main Cloudron icon.

Just some thoughts. Congratulations.

girish

@scooke yes, the folder icon is really just a place holder logo. We need to find some time to make some real logo.

ruihildt

That's great!

I'll try this out, I share your frustrations with regard to the current solutions.

For me the most important part is the sync aspect from mobile/desktop. I want to have a straightforward and firstclass experience sharing files between my devices.

Do you have in mind what the future workflow will be like in that regard?

robi

The About menu once logged in needs some love..

mehdi

@ruihildt From what I understood of the post, the idea is to use existing WebDAV sync clients. So there should already be good ones for all platforms.

nebulon

@robi ha, yes lots of placeholder content still.

For anyone interested in the collabora integration, if you install collabora on the same Cloudron and then edit the config.json for cubby like the following with your collabora domain, it can already open ods and odt files:

{
    "collabora": {
        "host": "https://office.example.com"
    }
}

ruihildt

@mehdi Do you have any good recommandations in mind?

mehdi

@ruihildt On the Linux side, I believe Gnome and KDE both have native support for mounting webdav, not syncing to a local folder though. Not sure on other OSs.

robi

@nebulon said in Cubby - Open Source File Sharing:

@robi ha, yes lots of placeholder content still.

For anyone interested in the collabora integration, if you install collabora on the same Cloudron and then edit the config.json for cubby like the following with your collabora domain, it can already open ods and odt files:
{
    "collabora": {
        "host": "https://office.example.com"
    }
}

Does this not work with OnlyOffice?

MooCloud_Matt

Maybe storage already on S3, it's easier to maintain and it's scalable, redundant, easy to have a remote backend for storage.

A good fit for the new multiserver cloudron.

girish

@moocloud_matt maybe you can open feature request on github

robi

@girish instead of doing just an app integration, I think making it a general Cloudron integration would be better, and cover a lot more apps.
Mount S3 and store certain directories of Apps there.

girish

@robi I guess you mean something like a s3fs or fuse mount? From whag I have heard, they are not very stable. And also, they don't support file permissions and meta data afaik .

neurokrish

@nebulon @girish will there be a search option for files? It will be nice to have an indexing mechanism for files that are already ocr'd, instead of just looking for the file names.

robi

@girish No, I mean more like rclone

MooCloud_Matt

@girish
I will,
I just think that standard storage backend will make also your job easier to maintain it in the future.

nebulon

@robi said in Cubby - Open Source File Sharing:

@nebulon said in Cubby - Open Source File Sharing:
@robi ha, yes lots of placeholder content still.

For anyone interested in the collabora integration, if you install collabora on the same Cloudron and then edit the config.json for cubby like the following with your collabora domain, it can already open ods and odt files:
{
    "collabora": {
        "host": "https://office.example.com"
    }
}
Does this not work with OnlyOffice?

OnlyOffice uses a different kind of API and iframe integration, which is currently not implemented. I've created a feature request for this at https://github.com/cloudron-io/cubby/issues/18

yusf

Good news, a highly anticipated development! With a shared storage with the Syncthing app I suppose the apps may work in conjunction?

atridad

Just tried the latest release and I love it! I think I'd be ready to use it once I can do the following:

Sync via webdav
Manage users
Configure storage limit per-user
Use OnlyOffice

Right now I use NextCloud for email + calendar + files + contacts. I'd like to move the first three to Sogo and use Cubby as a dedicated file storage app for clients. It looks promising! Keep up the excellent work!

nebulon

@atridad usermanagement is probably out-of-scope for some time, since on Cloudron this would be done in the Cloudron dashboard. There is a small cli tool already though for local non-LDAP users.

If you have any specific feature requests around that, might be good to open a github issue to track those.

marcusquinn

Just seen this, nice work! @nebulon & @girish I can see the need, potential and definitely happy to help with testing and feedback.

The Apps I do find handy in Nextcloud, that I think are fair-game to be features for Cubby, without being feature-creep, are the Photos Explorer and Map Explorer for Photos. Our users really like both of those in Nextcloud, although wish they were a bit faster of course!

Mountain Duck pretty-much does everything the Nextcloud sync app does for those looking at alternatives there, although at a cost.

I'd like to see a Compact view, similar to Google Drive. These over-sized, over-spaced UIs do seem to infantalise things to me, when anything used in anger really needs to make better use of screen space when most users are on smaller screens.

girish

@marcusquinn yeah, the first goal currently is to get the file sharing aspect work well (and syncing either via nextcloud client or other webdav clients).

Photos has to explored in the future whether this is to be a totally separate app or part of cubby.

marcusquinn

GitHub issues logged.

Perhaps some inspiration for a Compact view:

humptydumpty

Is Cubby reliable enough to have some basic cloud storage?

marcusquinn

If you wanted to really make for a killer feature, I guess you could mount existing Nextcloud file systems in Cubby, so one could use either interface and migrate as Cubby matured and made Nextcloud redundant for those not wanting all the plugins.

jdaviescoates

@marcusquinn said in Cubby - Open Source File Sharing:

Photos Explorer and Map Explorer for Photos. Our users really like both of those in Nextcloud, although wish they were a bit faster of course!

I'm hopeful we'll get PhotoPrism one day soon which I think does that stuff too (and likely much faster than Nextcloud)

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Cubby - Open Source File Sharing