File hosting for OSS projects needed!

[LoRd_MuldeR]

As my main file hosting server, which had been kindly provided by Smok3 (http://85.230.118.136/member.php?u=577) for a long time, is going to shut down, I need a new place to host my files. I need file hosting and must be able to run PHP5 scripts. Database is not needed at all. However the server must be able to handle ~75.000 downloads per month. If you are willing to support my projects by providing the required file hosting, please contact me via PM!

:thanks:

[Guest]

What are the scripts doing?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

They accept "HTTP Post" parameters as input, that are sent from a Form on my web-site. If the parameters pass validation, the requested file is sent. Otherwise an error page is sent.

(Hint: This is done to prevent deep links to the files from commercial software web-sites. Also the script stores anonymous statistics to a log file)

[microchip8]

How about bplaced? http://www.bplaced.net/

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Sign up and get absolutely free and without ads up to:
2 GB disk space for your website
PHP5 | 8x FTP | 8x MySQL | 8x PostgreSQL
Unlimited bandwidth & no file size limits

Where is the drawback? :p

And do you have any personal experience with that service ???

[microchip8]

Where is the drawback? :p

And do you have any personal experience with that service ???

There is no drawback really, except it has a max speed of 2 Mbps and one can register only at specific times. Yes I have experience with it as my small site runs there http://microchip.bplaced.net/ its support forum is also very good and questions get answered quickly. Also, if you get the 1 GB account, you can easily switch later to the 2 GB one just by asking on the forum and providing a good reason why you need more space. Stax76 also runs his site there

[LoRd_MuldeR]

1 GB will be more than sufficient, but bandwidth will be a problem. But I will think about bplaced as an option, if nothing better comes along. Thanks for the tip!

[Guest]

They accept "HTTP Post" parameters as input, that are sent from a Form on my web-site. If the parameters pass validation, the requested file is sent. Otherwise an error page is sent.

(Hint: This is done to prevent deep links to the files from commercial software web-sites. Also the script stores anonymous statistics to a log file) So will you require an account and access to the pages?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

So will you require an account and access to the pages?

I'd need FTP access to upload my files to a location where they are publicly accessible through HTTP, yes :o

[stax76]

No problems so far at bplaced since they moved to new servers, I'm running razorCMS which is very small, fast and easy to use yet has nice featues, doesn't need a DB though bplaced would offer it and new PHP versions offer sqllite, only drawback is I'm constantly wondering how can they offer everything for free.

SourceForge has shaped up nicely feature wise so I would consider it for OSS, no problems with it either, I've dumped TortoiseSVN in favor of RapidSVN btw. so I don't have stupid menus in explorer all day long.

Another very good service I recently started to use is wikispaces, they managed to make text editing and Web 2.0 WYSIWYG editing to work together and inter operate nicely so you don't have to study the docs but can just drop some widgets to generate the markup.

my bplaced/razorCMS site: http://www.stax76.bplaced.net

my SourceForge site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/staxmedia

SF has improved the features, look and feel and ease of use a lot.

my wiki (could need some more content): http://stax76.wikispaces.com/StaxRip+FAQ

[clsid]

SourceForge has (s)FTP and shell access.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

To make it clear again: I don't need any web interface and no CMS either. All I need is simple FTP access to a HTTP server with PHP5 support to upload my files.

@clsid:
But SourceForge has their own download system. Don't think they'd allow me to host my downloads (some files are 25 MB) on the WWW server ;)

[stax76]

Why not use a web interface, uploading a file to SourceForge with their web interface is as easy if not easier than using FileZilla. I guess they also support command line tools for their file release system for people who prefer a command shell.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I need to use my own PHP-based download system, as I can't change the way the Auto Updater communicates with the download server. That's because it is already installed on thousands of computers.

Fortunately my Auto Updater fetches the URL of the download server from my main web-site server (or from one of several backup locations). So at least I can move the download sever to a new location easily.

[mariush]

How big is the average update... more to the point how much traffic do you estimate your updates will cause monthly? I have a dedicated server with 2TB of monthly bandwidth so I could donate 50-100GB monthly for a good cause.

you might also want to look into http://drop.io though probably won't be compatible with what you want to accomplish.

Have you considered implementing a rudimentary DIFF system for your updates? I would guess that when you have a 25 MB file to update weekly/monthly you could do a diff between let's say the last 5-10 revisions of that file.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

How big is the average update... more to the point how much traffic do you estimate your updates will cause monthly? I have a dedicated server with 2TB of monthly bandwidth so I could donate 50-100GB monthly for a good cause.

Hard to say. I only have log file, which counts ~75.000 downloads per months. Usually a bit less.

However I don't believe that all those downloads complete and people that use some kind of download managers may trigger several log entries per download.

After all I can't say for sure that 100 GB would be enough. In theory 75k x 25 MB would be something like 1.5 TB, but that sounds too weird for me ;)

Have you considered implementing a rudimentary DIFF system for your updates? I would guess that when you have a 25 MB file to update weekly/monthly you could do a diff between let's say the last 5-10 revisions of that file.

Nope. The main purpose of my MPlayer project is providing a complete all-in-one package.

[mariush]

well... let's try it out for a month for start and if the bandwidth is not too much we'll go on indefinitely... send me a pm with the scripts, how how you'd like it set up, if you have a subdomain you want me to use/set and so on...

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Thank you, PM on the way :)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Update: I gave bplaced (http://www.bplaced.net/) a try and it may work as a temporary solution. However the bandwidth limit is problematic: I wouldn't care if the download speed was limited, as long as the sever is responsive at last. Unfortunately they seem to reject/delay connections, if bandwidth is low. As a result, downloads sometimes take extremely long to start up. Or they finally fail with "internal server error 500".

Anyway, hosting is kindly provided by Mariush (http://85.230.118.136/member.php?u=160669) now. Let's see how this goes. Thanks everybody :thanks: