Everything is in the title!
This should be be requested in Kodi forums.
Kadi targets at being a audio / video entertainment center. Here, it is about accessing any kind of content through http(s), including system files…
Your request is very niche for a distro aimed at being a modest media center with the ability to allow many user customizations. OSMC is based on Debian therefore, if there are solutions for these available in Debian, you should investigate and attempt to make use of them.
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You are obviously right to say that apt-get is THE way to get peripheral functionalities. However, OSMC app store now enables to have a samba server or transmission properly activated in OSMC. Having a web file manager in OSMC app store would make sense and complete Samba.
If all features are allready included, then what is left to tinker with?
Also not everybody is looking for the same features.
I mean If you have samba why would you need more file management,
as you can just add remove files using samba.
Just make sure the file path is in the smb.conf
Samba is the right tool to feed a MediaCenter within your home network, but may not be the right tool to access your media files from the internet or/and from office (smb protocole is often blocked in the office and not that recommended when you open your home network on the internet).
Hope this helps
In that case I recommend you use VPN to connect to your house and then use samba or sftp.
Or simply use ssh and sftp to maintain your files.
You do not want to hang a webserver with your personal stuff
directly in the internet
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This can not be stressed enough. OSMC will always advise against this…
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“You do not want to hang a webserver with your personal stuff
directly in the internet” : unless I don’t catch everything, the web is full of tutorials on how to open ports on home box to turn raspberry into a web server. Obviously, authentication and a way to choose directories to display are required. Barracudadrive offer such fonctionalities but all is not really open source.
thanks, no doubt raspberry can make it!
The web is indeed full of tutorials on how to setup your network so you can access your files on the internet from everywhere.
The point is not to just randomly follow any tutorial that will tell you how to open ports, the challenge is to do that responsibly and in such a way that your personal data is not at risk.
Therefore should you want to access your files from outside your home network, I suggest that one follows a how to on how to setup a VPN (virtual private network) gateway to your home network. The moment you are logged into your personal VPN you are virtually at home. And all data going to and coming from your home network is encrypted. This also ensures that no unnecessary ports on your home router are opened.
If you decide to put your web-server online directly on your router, the moment anybody does a port scan it will show that a web-server is online. Should there be malicious intent someone could decide to find an exploit in order gain access.
The moment one has sensitive data on a computer one should make sure that there are enough safety precautions in place to ensure the safety of your data.
If you want to access your files remotely over WebDav, then OwnCloud is the way to go IMO.
I haven’t installed on a Pi myself, but others seem to have done it. I did install it on a remote server and it syncs my files, calendars and tasks between multiple PCs, and without much overhead.
My osmc Pi is exposed to the world via a single port that I access over SFTP. It’s a failsafe file backup server, and it has saved my ass on a couple of business trips.
To do this I would advise:
- setup a separate user account and disable logins for root and osmc.
- Change default ssh port
- Install UFW, firewall open only one port.
- Disable password logins, use Key file authentication
If you are super paranoid you can install fail2ban, or just keep an eye on your UFW log an block repeat attempts to logon.
To see a list of ips blocked by UFW, including the number of access attempts of each, try the following command:
sudo journalctl | grep -o 'SRC=[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}'|sort|uniq -c| sed -e 's/SRC=//g' | cat -n
From here you can identify and block the most persistent offenders.
EDIT: There’s a very comprehensive tutorial here:
https://www.pestmeester.nl/
Thanks a lot. It turns out that the need is shared and that a tool may prevent non expert users to open unwanted vulnerabilities.
Advanced users can obviously install a web server, php, and extplorer (or any alternative solution) and configure the whole properly and have fun. That is precisely what I did. Other users might need something on the shelf.