copyparty 0.11.0

http file sharing hub

⇆🎉 copyparty

• http file sharing hub (py2/py3) (on PyPI)
• MIT-Licensed, 2019-05-26, ed @ irc.rizon.net

summary

turn your phone or raspi into a portable file server with resumable uploads/downloads using IE6 or any other browser

• server runs on anything with py2.7 or py3.3+
• browse/upload with IE4 / netscape4.0 on win3.11 (heh)
• resumable uploads need firefox 34+ / chrome 41+ / safari 7+ for full speed
• code standard: black

📷 screenshots: browser // upload // thumbnails // md-viewer // search // fsearch // zip-DL // ie4

readme toc

• top
  • quickstart
  • notes
  • status
• bugs
  • general bugs
  • not my bugs
• the browser
  • tabs
  • hotkeys
  • tree-mode
  • thumbnails
  • zip downloads
  • uploading
    • file-search
  • markdown viewer
  • other tricks
• searching
  • search configuration
  • metadata from audio files
  • file parser plugins
  • complete examples
• browser support
• client examples
• up2k
• dependencies
  • optional dependencies
  • install recommended deps
  • optional gpl stuff
• sfx
  • sfx repack
• install on android
• dev env setup
• how to release
• todo

quickstart

download copyparty-sfx.py and you're all set!

running the sfx without arguments (for example doubleclicking it on Windows) will give everyone full access to the current folder; see -h for help if you want accounts and volumes etc

you may also want these, especially on servers:

• contrib/systemd/copyparty.service to run copyparty as a systemd service
• contrib/nginx/copyparty.conf to reverse-proxy behind nginx (for better https)

notes

• iPhone/iPad: use Firefox to download files
• Android-Chrome: increase "parallel uploads" for higher speed (android bug)
• Android-Firefox: takes a while to select files (their fix for ☝️)
• Desktop-Firefox: may use gigabytes of RAM if your files are massive seems to be OK now
• paper-printing is affected by dark/light-mode! use lightmode for color, darkmode for grayscale
  • because no browsers currently implement the media-query to do this properly orz

status

summary: all planned features work! now please enjoy the bloatening

• backend stuff
  • ☑ sanic multipart parser
  • ☑ load balancer (multiprocessing)
  • ☑ volumes (mountpoints)
  • ☑ accounts
• upload
  • ☑ basic: plain multipart, ie6 support
  • ☑ up2k: js, resumable, multithreaded
  • ☑ stash: simple PUT filedropper
  • ☑ symlink/discard existing files (content-matching)
• download
  • ☑ single files in browser
  • ☑ folders as zip / tar files
  • ☑ FUSE client (read-only)
• browser
  • ☑ tree-view
  • ☑ media player
  • ☑ thumbnails
    • ☑ images using Pillow
    • ☑ videos using FFmpeg
    • ☑ cache eviction (max-age; maybe max-size eventually)
  • ☑ SPA (browse while uploading)
    • if you use the file-tree on the left only, not folders in the file list
• server indexing
  • ☑ locate files by contents
  • ☑ search by name/path/date/size
  • ☑ search by ID3-tags etc.
• markdown
  • ☑ viewer
  • ☑ editor (sure why not)

bugs

• Windows: python 3.7 and older cannot read tags with ffprobe, so use mutagen or upgrade
• Windows: python 2.7 cannot index non-ascii filenames with -e2d
• Windows: python 2.7 cannot handle filenames with mojibake

general bugs

• all volumes must exist / be available on startup; up2k (mtp especially) gets funky otherwise
• cannot mount something at /d1/d2/d3 unless d2 exists inside d1
• hiding the contents at url /d1/d2/d3 using -v :d1/d2/d3:cd2d has the side-effect of creating databases (for files/tags) inside folders d1 and d2, and those databases take precedence over the main db at the top of the vfs - this means all files in d2 and below will be reindexed unless you already had a vfs entry at or below d2
• probably more, pls let me know

not my bugs

• Windows: msys2-python 3.8.6 occasionally throws "RuntimeError: release unlocked lock" when leaving a scoped mutex in up2k
  • this is an msys2 bug, the regular windows edition of python is fine

the browser

tabs

• [🔎] search by size, date, path/name, mp3-tags ... see searching
• [🚀] and [🎈] are the uploaders, see uploading
• [📂] mkdir, create directories
• [📝] new-md, create a new markdown document
• [📟] send-msg, either to server-log or into textfiles if --urlform save
• [⚙️] client configuration options

hotkeys

the browser has the following hotkeys

• I/K prev/next folder
• P parent folder
• G toggle list / grid view
• T toggle thumbnails / icons
• when playing audio:
  • 0..9 jump to 10%..90%
  • U/O skip 10sec back/forward
  • J/L prev/next song
    • J also starts playing the folder
• in the grid view:
  • S toggle multiselect
  • A/D zoom

tree-mode

by default there's a breadcrumbs path; you can replace this with a tree-browser sidebar thing by clicking the 🌲

click [-] and [+] to adjust the size, and the [a] toggles if the tree should widen dynamically as you go deeper or stay fixed-size

thumbnails

it does static images with Pillow and uses FFmpeg for video files, so you may want to --no-thumb or maybe just --no-vthumb depending on how destructive your users are

zip downloads

the zip link next to folders can produce various types of zip/tar files using these alternatives in the browser settings tab:

name	url-suffix	description
tar	?tar	plain gnutar, works great with curl | tar -xv
zip	?zip=utf8	works everywhere, glitchy filenames on win7 and older
zip_dos	?zip	traditional cp437 (no unicode) to fix glitchy filenames
zip_crc	?zip=crc	cp437 with crc32 computed early for truly ancient software

• hidden files (dotfiles) are excluded unless -ed
  • the up2k.db is always excluded
• zip_crc will take longer to download since the server has to read each file twice
  • please let me know if you find a program old enough to actually need this

you can also zip a selection of files or folders by clicking them in the browser, that brings up a selection editor and zip button in the bottom right

uploading

two upload methods are available in the html client:

• 🎈 bup, the basic uploader, supports almost every browser since netscape 4.0
• 🚀 up2k, the fancy one

up2k has several advantages:

• you can drop folders into the browser (files are added recursively)
• files are processed in chunks, and each chunk is checksummed
  • uploads resume if they are interrupted (for example by a reboot)
  • server detects any corruption; the client reuploads affected chunks
  • the client doesn't upload anything that already exists on the server
• the last-modified timestamp of the file is preserved

see up2k for details on how it works

protip: you can avoid scaring away users with docs/minimal-up2k.html which makes it look much simpler

the up2k UI is the epitome of polished inutitive experiences:

• "parallel uploads" specifies how many chunks to upload at the same time
• [🏃] analysis of other files should continue while one is uploading
• [💭] ask for confirmation before files are added to the list
• [💤] sync uploading between other copyparty tabs so only one is active
• [🔎] switch between upload and file-search mode

and then theres the tabs below it,

• [ok] is uploads which completed successfully
• [ng] is the uploads which failed / got rejected (already exists, ...)
• [done] shows a combined list of [ok] and [ng], chronological order
• [busy] files which are currently hashing, pending-upload, or uploading
  • plus up to 3 entries each from [done] and [que] for context
• [que] is all the files that are still queued

file-search

in the [🚀 up2k] tab, after toggling the [🔎] switch green, any files/folders you drop onto the dropzone will be hashed on the client-side. Each hash is sent to the server which checks if that file exists somewhere already

files go into [ok] if they exist (and you get a link to where it is), otherwise they land in [ng]

• the main reason filesearch is combined with the uploader is cause the code was too spaghetti to separate it out somewhere else, this is no longer the case but now i've warmed up to the idea too much

adding the same file multiple times is blocked, so if you first search for a file and then decide to upload it, you have to click the [cleanup] button to discard [done] files

note that since up2k has to read the file twice, [🎈 bup] can be up to 2x faster in extreme cases (if your internet connection is faster than the read-speed of your HDD)

up2k has saved a few uploads from becoming corrupted in-transfer already; caught an android phone on wifi redhanded in wireshark with a bitflip, however bup with https would probably have noticed as well thanks to tls also functioning as an integrity check

markdown viewer

• the document preview has a max-width which is the same as an A4 paper when printed

other tricks

• you can link a particular timestamp in an audio file by adding it to the URL, such as &20 / &20s / &1m20 / &t=1:20 after the .../#af-c8960dab

searching

when started with -e2dsa copyparty will scan/index all your files. This avoids duplicates on upload, and also makes the volumes searchable through the web-ui:

• make search queries by size/date/directory-path/filename, or...
• drag/drop a local file to see if the same contents exist somewhere on the server, see file-search

path/name queries are space-separated, AND'ed together, and words are negated with a - prefix, so for example:

• path: shibayan -bossa finds all files where one of the folders contain shibayan but filters out any results where bossa exists somewhere in the path
• name: demetori styx gives you good stuff

add -e2ts to also scan/index tags from music files:

search configuration

searching relies on two databases, the up2k filetree (-e2d) and the metadata tags (-e2t). Configuration can be done through arguments, volume flags, or a mix of both.

through arguments:

• -e2d enables file indexing on upload
• -e2ds scans writable folders on startup
• -e2dsa scans all mounted volumes (including readonly ones)
• -e2t enables metadata indexing on upload
• -e2ts scans for tags in all files that don't have tags yet
• -e2tsr deletes all existing tags, so a full reindex

the same arguments can be set as volume flags, in addition to d2d and d2t for disabling:

• -v ~/music::r:ce2dsa:ce2tsr does a full reindex of everything on startup
• -v ~/music::r:cd2d disables all indexing, even if any -e2* are on
• -v ~/music::r:cd2t disables all -e2t* (tags), does not affect -e2d*

e2tsr is probably always overkill, since e2ds/e2dsa would pick up any file modifications and cause e2ts to reindex those

metadata from audio files

-mte decides which tags to index and display in the browser (and also the display order), this can be changed per-volume:

• -v ~/music::r:cmte=title,artist indexes and displays title followed by artist

if you add/remove a tag from mte you will need to run with -e2tsr once to rebuild the database, otherwise only new files will be affected

-mtm can be used to add or redefine a metadata mapping, say you have media files with foo and bar tags and you want them to display as qux in the browser (preferring foo if both are present), then do -mtm qux=foo,bar and now you can -mte artist,title,qux

tags that start with a . such as .bpm and .dur(ation) indicate numeric value

see the beautiful mess of a dictionary in mtag.py for the default mappings (should cover mp3,opus,flac,m4a,wav,aif,)

--no-mutagen disables mutagen and uses ffprobe instead, which...

• is about 20x slower than mutagen
• catches a few tags that mutagen doesn't
  • melodic key, video resolution, framerate, pixfmt
• avoids pulling any GPL code into copyparty
• more importantly runs ffprobe on incoming files which is bad if your ffmpeg has a cve

file parser plugins

copyparty can invoke external programs to collect additional metadata for files using mtp (as argument or volume flag), there is a default timeout of 30sec

• -mtp .bpm=~/bin/audio-bpm.py will execute ~/bin/audio-bpm.py with the audio file as argument 1 to provide the .bpm tag, if that does not exist in the audio metadata
• -mtp key=f,t5,~/bin/audio-key.py uses ~/bin/audio-key.py to get the key tag, replacing any existing metadata tag (f,), aborting if it takes longer than 5sec (t5,)
• -v ~/music::r:cmtp=.bpm=~/bin/audio-bpm.py:cmtp=key=f,t5,~/bin/audio-key.py both as a per-volume config wow this is getting ugly

but wait, there's more! -mtp can be used for non-audio files as well using the a flag: ay only do audio files, an only do non-audio files, or ad do all files (d as in dontcare)

• -mtp ext=an,~/bin/file-ext.py runs ~/bin/file-ext.py to get the ext tag only if file is not audio (an)
• -mtp arch,built,ver,orig=an,eexe,edll,~/bin/exe.py runs ~/bin/exe.py to get properties about windows-binaries only if file is not audio (an) and file extension is exe or dll

complete examples

• read-only music server with bpm and key scanning
  python copyparty-sfx.py -v /mnt/nas/music:/music:r -e2dsa -e2ts -mtp .bpm=f,audio-bpm.py -mtp key=f,audio-key.py

browser support

ie = internet-explorer, ff = firefox, c = chrome, iOS = iPhone/iPad, Andr = Android

feature	ie6	ie9	ie10	ie11	ff 52	c 49	iOS	Andr
browse files	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
basic uploader	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
make directory	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
send message	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
set sort order	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
zip selection	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
directory tree	-	-	*1	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
up2k	-	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
icons work	-	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
markdown editor	-	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
markdown viewer	-	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
play mp3/m4a	-	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep	yep
play ogg/opus	-	-	-	-	yep	yep	*2	yep

• internet explorer 6 to 8 behave the same
• firefox 52 and chrome 49 are the last winxp versions
• *1 only public folders (login session is dropped) and no history / back-button
• *2 using a wasm decoder which can sometimes get stuck and consumes a bit more power

quick summary of more eccentric web-browsers trying to view a directory index:

browser	will it blend
safari (14.0.3/macos)	is chrome with janky wasm, so playing opus can deadlock the javascript engine
safari (14.0.1/iOS)	same as macos, except it recovers from the deadlocks if you poke it a bit
links (2.21/macports)	can browse, login, upload/mkdir/msg
lynx (2.8.9/macports)	can browse, login, upload/mkdir/msg
w3m (0.5.3/macports)	can browse, login, upload at 100kB/s, mkdir/msg
netsurf (3.10/arch)	is basically ie6 with much better css (javascript has almost no effect)
ie4 and netscape 4.0	can browse (text is yellow on white), upload with ?b=u
SerenityOS (22d13d8)	hits a page fault, works with ?b=u, file input not-impl, url params are multiplying

client examples

• javascript: dump some state into a file (two separate examples)

  • await fetch('https://127.0.0.1:3923/', {method:"PUT", body: JSON.stringify(foo)});
  • var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('POST', 'https://127.0.0.1:3923/msgs?raw'); xhr.send('foo');

• curl/wget: upload some files (post=file, chunk=stdin)

  • post(){ curl -b cppwd=wark http://127.0.0.1:3923/ -F act=bput -F f=@"$1";}
post movie.mkv
  • post(){ wget --header='Cookie: cppwd=wark' http://127.0.0.1:3923/?raw --post-file="$1" -O-;}
post movie.mkv
  • chunk(){ curl -b cppwd=wark http://127.0.0.1:3923/ -T-;}
chunk <movie.mkv

• FUSE: mount a copyparty server as a local filesystem

  • cross-platform python client available in ./bin/
  • rclone as client can give ~5x performance, see ./docs/rclone.md

copyparty returns a truncated sha512sum of your PUT/POST as base64; you can generate the same checksum locally to verify uplaods:

b512(){ printf "$((sha512sum||shasum -a512)|sed -E 's/ .*//;s/(..)/\\x\1/g')"|base64|head -c43;}
b512 <movie.mkv

up2k

quick outline of the up2k protocol, see uploading for the web-client

• the up2k client splits a file into an "optimal" number of chunks
  • 1 MiB each, unless that becomes more than 256 chunks
  • tries 1.5M, 2M, 3, 4, 6, ... until <= 256 chunks or size >= 32M
• client posts the list of hashes, filename, size, last-modified
• server creates the wark, an identifier for this upload
  • sha512( salt + filesize + chunk_hashes )
  • and a sparse file is created for the chunks to drop into
• client uploads each chunk
  • header entries for the chunk-hash and wark
  • server writes chunks into place based on the hash
• client does another handshake with the hashlist; server replies with OK or a list of chunks to reupload

dependencies

• jinja2 (is built into the SFX)

optional dependencies

enable music tags:

• either mutagen (fast, pure-python, skips a few tags, makes copyparty GPL? idk)
• or FFprobe (20x slower, more accurate, possibly dangerous depending on your distro and users)

enable image thumbnails:

• Pillow (requires py2.7 or py3.5+)

enable video thumbnails:

• ffmpeg and ffprobe somewhere in $PATH

enable reading HEIF pictures:

• pyheif-pillow-opener (requires Linux or a C compiler)

enable reading AVIF pictures:

• pillow-avif-plugin

install recommended deps

python -m pip install --user -U jinja2 mutagen Pillow

optional gpl stuff

some bundled tools have copyleft dependencies, see ./bin/#mtag

these are standalone programs and will never be imported / evaluated by copyparty

sfx

currently there are two self-contained "binaries":

• copyparty-sfx.py -- pure python, works everywhere, recommended
• copyparty-sfx.sh -- smaller, but only for linux and macos, kinda deprecated

launch either of them (use sfx.py on systemd) and it'll unpack and run copyparty, assuming you have python installed of course

pls note that copyparty-sfx.sh will fail if you rename copyparty-sfx.py to copyparty.py and keep it in the same folder because sys.path is funky

sfx repack

if you don't need all the features you can repack the sfx and save a bunch of space; all you need is an sfx and a copy of this repo (nothing else to download or build, except for either msys2 or WSL if you're on windows)

• 724K original size as of v0.4.0
• 256K after ./scripts/make-sfx.sh re no-ogv
• 164K after ./scripts/make-sfx.sh re no-ogv no-cm

the features you can opt to drop are

• ogv.js, the opus/vorbis decoder which is needed by apple devices to play foss audio files
• cm/easymde, the "fancy" markdown editor

for the repack to work, first run one of the sfx'es once to unpack it

note: you can also just download and run scripts/copyparty-repack.sh -- this will grab the latest copyparty release from github and do a no-ogv no-cm repack; works on linux/macos (and windows with msys2 or WSL)

install on android

install Termux (see ocv.me/termux) and then copy-paste this into Termux (long-tap) all at once:

apt update && apt -y full-upgrade && termux-setup-storage && apt -y install python && python -m ensurepip && python -m pip install -U copyparty
echo $?

after the initial setup, you can launch copyparty at any time by running copyparty anywhere in Termux

dev env setup

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install jinja2  # mandatory deps
pip install Pillow  # thumbnail deps
pip install black bandit pylint flake8  # vscode tooling

how to release

in the scripts folder:

• run make -C deps-docker to build all dependencies
• git tag v1.2.3 && git push origin --tags
• create github release with make-tgz-release.sh
• upload to pypi with make-pypi-release.(sh|bat)
• create sfx with make-sfx.sh

todo

roughly sorted by priority

• separate sqlite table per tag
• audio fingerprinting
• readme.md as epilogue
• reduce up2k roundtrips
  • start from a chunk index and just go
  • terminate client on bad data
• os.copy_file_range for up2k cloning
• single sha512 across all up2k chunks? maybe
• figure out the deal with pixel3a not being connectable as hotspot
  • pixel3a having unpredictable 3sec latency in general :||||

discarded ideas

• up2k partials ui
• cache sha512 chunks on client
• comment field
• look into android thumbnail cache file format