I post this here cause I couldn’t find any good solution to my problem. Sorry if I write some mistakes cause english isn’t my native language.
I’m currently using OSMC on myrapsberry pi 3B+ and am very satisfied about it. I don’t want to change it, specificaly cause I invested much time customizing it.
I would like to share an USB key on my raspberry pi to share my family pictures and videos. The problem is that I need a really good web interface to make it accessible and beautiful to use by any family member.
What could be great would be a form where people can ask to register and I would have to accept or deny the registration or at least having a users management where I can add anybody and then people change their password.
And of course I would like to avoid having to develop it myself.
Basically, I can create a samba share but what is lacking here is a good UI.
I heared that Media Open Vault would do the job but can’t be installed on an OSMC OS.
Are you talking about exposing a share to the internet? It sounds to me like what you want would be better suited to running a running a Plex server off of a NAS or PC.
First, here is what I wanna do. I wanna expose a share to the internet. It is indeed something close to a NAS that I’m looking for but I wanna use my raspberry Pi with already installed kodi on it to do that (cheaper, no need for something performant or fast, no need to use more electricity).
The idea is to share my family pictures and videos to them. That’s why I’m looking for a client interface which is pretty and not too confusing for them. Something really easy to use.
The interface is the main problem here. Cause I could use an ftp server or a samba sharing easily but this wouldn’t be very easy to use. Remember the people who will access it have 0 knowledge in informatic except “go to a site, identify, watch pictures and videos”
The kodi’s default web interface seems more like a remote interface and isn’t really about getting what you’ve got on the driver but more casting it to kodi.
I’m not familiar with NextCloud but I will look what it is.
Why OSMC? Apologies if I misunderstand you but it sounds like you want to Computer–>USBstick–>RPi–>Internet.
Why not stay on your non-RPi computer and share them privately on some website? It’s the first link from a google search but the link below suggests 6 (e.g. flickr, Google photos etc);
OSMC cause I am already using it for other things and I don’t wanna change it. And I don’t wanna buy something else cause I already have a pi functionning 24/24.
Here are the main reasons I don’t wanna use instagram, Google photos or others things that I don’t manage :
I want to host it myself for a more private use
Some people wont trust Google or other companies, so they won’t agree with the share of their pictures if they don’t trust the hoster
You can’t manage permissions on Google (it is either a link that can be found or you need a Google account), you loose the rights on your photos on facebook
Often, the size is limited for a free use (Google for example)
Most of them need an application or an account to see the pictures (instagram, facebook, …)
You can’t share with the quality you want with most of these apps. Or for the ones you can, you have a limited space
For a short answer : I want to be the only manager of my photos and don’t want to post it online on an untrusted source. And the only trusted source of me and my family in a matter of computer science is me.
You should Google for Debian solutions. OSMC is based in Debian and many options should be available. What you are trying to do is a bit outside of the OSMC scope.
I have no idea how well it works, what limitations it has, or how OSMC updates might affect it, but apparently it’s possible to run a Plex server on your current install. The advantage going the plex route is that it takes care of permissions, shares, firewalls, and provides for easy clients. The downside would be that everything it does is going to be independent of Kodi so any resources used by one program is going to affect the other and it’s not like there is a lot to start with on a Raspberry Pi.
Ok, for that purpose you never should use the Kodi Webinterface or Samba as both of them have security risks if exposed to the Internet.
Nextcloud is then the solution for you. But I hope you know enough about security not to create another zombie device in the Internet.
I just tried to install Nextcloud. This is a bit early to say yet but that could indeed answer my need even if this can be a bit too big. But I’m sure if I make viewers profiles for my family members and configure the interface well this will be perfect.
Thanks for all of this.
[edit] After some parametring, here is my review.
The app is indeed pretty nice even if it is hard to manage.
But it is completely designed to work like a facebook thing. What I would like would be to have guest users who can register on it (with admin validation) but these users should have read only access. The app “Guests” does part of the job but not all. I didn’t find any way to have read-only users who would not have the complete UI (this is pretty ugly to show a “create something” button to an user and say he can’t do that on click. This would be better to hide the button). The parametring isn’t made either to stop every file creation. You can’t prevent an user to write in his own folder or even to not have a folder.
I will look further at NextCloud, but I’m not sure it could answer my need.
With enabled 2FA. There’s a nextcloud module for that which supports U2F.
However, really complex php-webapps are a security nightmare. Definitely setup some sort of network access controls in front of nextcloud so only authenticated users can even see the login page. That can be a VPN, ssh-tunnel, RADIUS.
Allowing the entire world to hack away at the system as long as they like is a real issue. Be certain to setup fail2ban to firewall failed attempts ASAP, regardless of the solution.
And expect to patch both the OS and any webapp weekly, if not daily. Being on the internet, providing services, is a responsibility.
I’ve been running a nextcloud server for a few years. The gallery is really slow and doesn’t auto-generate more efficient files as needed. I use an old perl cgi script for my online photo gallery. It has over 28,000 photos. I’ve tried about 20 other web-gallery web-apps over the decades. Most have terrible security, IMHO.
I don’t use the nextcloud files app much either. For video and music, there are better solutions. I love the chat and video conferencing it provides. Great when travelling to be able to video chat with the family, not going through any 3rd party. All access to my nextcloud server is through either a VPN or using an ssh-SOCKS proxy.
Seems I was all over the place. Sorry. Hope something there is useful.