FFS

Friendly File Server (FFS) is a file server borne from the frustration friendliness of attempting to get other file servers to work.

Run

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catears/ffs/master/deploy/gh-deploy.sh | bash ;
docker run --rm --volume ./:/files --env 'FFS_STORE_ROOT=/files' --publish 8080:8080 catears/ffs

This will download the latest release and run a docker image on port 8080 for you to try it out.

More advanced setups can be found in the deploy folder.

Licenses

Material Design Icons License

Material design icons are stored as part of this repository.

See License and fonts.google.com for more info

Image Magick License

Copyright 2025 Henrik "CatEars" Adolfsson

Licensed under the ImageMagick License (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

https://imagemagick.org/script/license.php

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Motivation

The goals of FFS is to be:

• Crash-resistant
  • A power outage should mean you "just restart" the server
• Zero config
  • Runnable with no config and all config in-files and in-app
• Low Dependency
  • Use standard API-s and slow moving technologies instead of v0.0.1 NPM packages
• Mobile usable
  • Halfway between mobile hostile to mobile first lies mobile usable.
• Easy Extensible
  • Writing a custom plugin and enabling it should be easy peasy

Honorable mentions - That simply did not fit me

All the different file servers I have tested have fallen short. In short, their shortcomings are inspirations for FFS.

• NextCloud - SQL Database and complicated upgrades. Clearly built for organizations that can pour lots of effort into just getting it running...
• Seafile - Dead simple installation and setup. However, an SQL databases that need manual migrations and downtime. In my heart, I love you Seafile, it was simply not meant to be.
• Apache file and directory indexes - Easy and little config. But not much else than that.
• copyparty - Software that had the right vibe and functions, but when I simply could not read the code, I felt like I was deploying a minefield of security issues.