Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

Hi there,

I'm looking for a solution or application to easily transfer files from my home (Windows XP) PC when I'm out and about. I can currently connect to the PC using VNC and SSH port forwarding on my Linksys router, which is running DD-WRT.

Basically, I can log in to the router with SSH and public key authentication and I have set up local forwarding in my .ssh/config file to forward certain connections from the N900 to the PC. It works great for VNC, I just have to issue a simple WOL command in X Terminal, while connected to the router, then point the VNC client at localhost.

Unfortunately it's proving more difficult with FTP (using gFTP from extras-devel) since the multiple connections required are harder to forward. I'm happy to install services on the PC but would prefer to handle the connections over the tunnel, rather than exposing ports on the PC itself to the internet.

Is HTTP (with IIS) the way forward? Some flavour of SCP? Any help appreciated. :)

Cheers
Dave

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

Grsync is found from N900 repositories.
I think you can get sshd (ssh server) on Windows also, to get encrypted transfers. Maybe you need also rsync installed on Windows.

Anyway, using Grsync over ssh you need to run it on the terminal window of N900, so it can ask you a password.

(btw, How to know, from what repository some installed package in the system has come from?)

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

Well if you can handle some tweaking and you have a DD-WRT firmware capable router, you could set up OpenVPN, which basically gives lot more options and you don't have to use ssh tunneling at all. When the system is configured, everything works really great. It's just a big hassle to get the system running.

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

Thanks but I don't think Grsync is what I need because I'm looking for a way to browse a remote folder and transfer individual files to and from that folder. It doesn't look to me like Grsync does that, correct me if I'm wrong. :)

So what method/client application would I use once the VPN is in place?

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

look at sftp or scp - both part of openSSH? http://www.openssh.com/manual.html

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

True, it does not do that. Would be usefull to me also - sftp support to browse remote dirs to get source-/destination path and ask password in GUI.

Feature request to the makers could help. Otherwise it seems like a perfect tool and usable hildonisez GUI.
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/grsync/

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

Ok, I've finally sorted this out. :)

It did take a while to do but none of it was particularly difficult. Firstly I had to re-flash my router with the vpn version of DD-WRT (instead of the standard version I was already using) and then put all my settings back how they were.

Secondly I had to install OpenVPN on my PC, on the Debian dual-boot installation I set up a couple of weeks ago, in order to create the certificates and keys I needed on the router and N900. It's all described in the incredibly helpful DD-WRT wiki and it would have worked first time if I hadn't changed the UDP port and then forgotten to change the port number in the new firewall rule.

I set the VPN on the router in bridging mode so I can use Wizard Mounter at a later date but, for now, FTP with gFTP is working well. :D

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

I'm not sure if there is a Maemo build (I think there is, though), but I like SSHFS. It's a FUSE-based virtual filesystem that wraps SFTP. If you have a typical SSH configuration with OpenSSH or similar, it should Just Work (TM) as long as you can punch SSH through your router at all.
http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

Re: Transfer files from home PC to N900 over internet?
 

If only I could find some free time, I'd love to write a decent SFTP client for Maemo/Qt. :(