Advice on remote storage with vpn

Sorry…T B G not working well.
good day all. Sorry for any typos. Keyboard acting up. I need a nudge in the direction. I have a pi 3 and wanted to make a remote storage that I install at the other side of the city. Installing Ubuntu on the pie . What is next? For clarifications i will be a very private server. At home LAN tried with windows filezilla and wscp an d the transfer rate is slow. A turtle with arthritis can go faster. I was thinking in the lines of transmission and do like a torrent log on. And hope o gain speed. Any thoughts or suggestions on which path to take? A tutorial site?

Thanks,
Peter

Coincidence has it that I have a RPi 3 B+ arriving in the mail today. :slight_smile:
You don’t need to install Ubuntu on it. Raspbian will do just fine and it is also based on Debian, just like Ubuntu. Is your Pi 3 a B+ or an A+? I’m asking because I believe there are WiFi speed differences between the two. B+ supports b/g/n< not sure about A+. Either way - they both have an UTP port and I believe it’s a Gigabit one. So transfer rates should be OK as long as you’re using a cable and a decent router.

You now have three options:

1. You create a FTP server on the Pi 3 by installing something like proftpd:

sudo apt install proftpd

FTP servers tend to have good transfer rates but they’re just FTP servers. You upload and download files and that’s all you can do with them.

Or

2. You install a VPN either on the Pi 3 (Say OpenVPN) or - even better - if you have a dedicated router that has VPN capabilities you create a VPN tunnel to the Pi 3. You can then access that VPN from another location to get access to the Pi 3.
Now on the Pi 3 you can install Samba

sudo apt install samba

and then create a shared folder just like you would in a LAN.
Whenever you log on to your remote LAN through the VPN the share will be accessible from the outside (via login credentials of course).

Or

3. You create an upload/download webserver. You install Apache, PHP and MySQL (a LAMP server basically)

sudo apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql mysql-server

and find a PHP script that is capable of letting you upload/download files. Then you forward port 80 on the router (or, if also acting as a router, on the Pi 3) so that it is open to external browsers. You password-protect that webpage via a .htaccess and a .htpasswd file and use your browser to access the server via a static IP (or, if using a dynamic IP, you can use a free/commercial dynamic DNS provider to always have acces to that changing IP via a web URL). You could even install Joomla! or Wordpress or another CMS on that webserver and seek a plugin used for uploading/downloading files. This last option requires more work and configuration but opens up only port 80 to the world.
Options #1 and #3 can also be implemented inside a VPN environment, for extra safety measures. A Pi 3 can handle all the sollutions above as it has a 1,4GHz CPU and 1GB RAM (at least my Pi 3 B+ does). Plenty of processing power for a FTP server, a fileserver or a webserver. Or all three, if you wish it so. You being the single user (I presume) they can all run without hickups and handle multiple logins and/or connections.

I for one would opt for #2, but it depends on what you need the Pi 3 to be (and do).

PS: I forgot for a moment, but you can also use SSH and scp to transfer files:

sudo apt install ssh sshd

Sorry for my late reply. Finally, my new keyboard has arrived. Will try your method to see if im able.

Thanks again,

Peter

Sorry. Have pi 3 +. My objective: have outside storage. Friend of mine had ahouse fire and all his info was lost in smoke. So I thought had the pi 3 at my stepsons house to hopefully avoid a diaster. Also to pass the time and use some immagination.

Then Option #1 would be fit. An FTP server. It’s fast, doesn’t need a VPN (only if you’re extra-paranoid) and easy to set up. I’d go with ProFTPd if I were you.

After lunch and food shopping, I will try. My concern is only using noip so I see it on the. Have very bad luck with noip. Not one device able to “see” outside. BTW, Thanks,

Peter

You’re welcome.
You don’t have to use NoIP. There are other free Dynamic DNS providers out there: Dynu, afraid.org, DuckDNS, Securepoint DynDNS…

Hello Razvan. For days I cannot log into PROFTPD. Followed a guide, which I will paste. When I try to log in, it says not a secure connection.

Operator error?
Thanks,
Peter

Hi whoopus.
Could you write in here the exact message that you are receiving when trying to log in? Or maybe post a screenshot? Also - what guide did you use to install ProFTPd?