Generating Files Without Uploading

[mcrossley]

Bob, I think it is a fair point that the setup of interval/realtime, and FTP is not very intuitive. It's what has been there from day one and it could do with some loving.

Ideally you want a section of config that just controls all this in a simple manner. Currently FTP is "controlled" by whether the FTP host name is blank or not!

More for the ToDo list!

[radilly]

Bob, I think it is a fair point that the setup of interval/realtime, and FTP is not very intuitive. It's what has been there from day one and it could do with some loving.

Ideally you want a section of config that just controls all this in a simple manner. Currently FTP is "controlled" by whether the FTP host name is blank or not!

More for the ToDo list!

Mark-
The easiest, and I think largely adequate and quick solution would be to just add an (i) information line below the Host name as you've added elsewhere to the effect that leaving it blank disables FTP. I suspected that would do it, but I removed Host name, Username and Password to be sure ... the password being a small part of my idea to move to rsynch over ssh.

I did just put back FTP for a few minutes to capture some data on the difference in performance - which is significant. I'll start a separate thread on what I'm doing, looking for a little feedback (or testing) on it. If I can get some confirmation I'd be happy to write it up for the Wiki. That's part of my reason for wanting to clarify my understanding. I also believe some WinSCP scripting could do this on Windows as well. I've actually been using WinSCP in a batch file to effectively rsync my Cumulus install to a drive on my PC (although I just now realized I am accumulating a bunch of backup subdirectories ). May take me a couple days to pull together my thinking about how others can replicate my approach.

I think it's pretty amazing - the amount of flexibility baked into Cumulus given how it's evolved over time. There's also a considerable body of knowledge among those using this forum. At the same time I found it interesting that a few folks in this thread ... reasonably ... questioned why I'd want to disable FTP. (And if I hadn't run into an increasing number of FTP issues ... across 3 different hosting accounts over time ... I'd still be happily using it.)

In a nutshell I appreciate the work you've done, and, having skipped quite a few CMX updates, I have seen stability noticeably improved as much as features.
THANKS!

[mcrossley]

I run Cumulus and my web server on the same box, so I can get away with local file copies using the Extra Files - easy for me!

As you note, good old FTP is just about the slowest file transfer mechanism you can use!
SFTP is considerably faster (it's just the equivalent of SCP under the skin), so use that if your web server supports it.

I'll add an info note to the host name setting.

[radilly]

As you note, good old FTP is just about the slowest file transfer mechanism you can use!
SFTP is considerably faster (it's just the equivalent of SCP under the skin), so use that if your web server supports it.

Some years ago I was working on some really stripped down Unix systems and relied on vi, ftp, mail and got very comfortable with those basics. I believe today, the lite versions of Raspberry OS doesn't even have an ftp client.

I did try to use SFTP, but had issues. In fact it locked up my hosted server. Whatever I did ... the server saw it as an attack and shut down the IP address, which I had to have CSR reset for me. Not a great environment to experiment in! I'm pretty sure the issue was in the Pre-shared Private Key file for SFTP (psk file) spec. The closest things I know of is the ppk on Windows (PuTTY) and suspect I wasn't translating correctly to Raspbian. In researching SFTP I thought I read that SCP was somewhat better integrated with ssh.

I've now gone exclusively to password-less ssh, using ssh-keygen (https://www.ssh.com/ssh/keygen/) for all my uploads, CMX and several Python scripts - which does require a little initial server-side setup. No passwords are stored on disk, just the asymmetric keys. Seems to be working really well thus far.

I'll send a PM about sharing the approach.

I run Cumulus and my web server on the same box, so I can get away with local file copies using the Extra Files - easy for me!

I installed apache on my Pis and have a few things running off it - mostly cgi-bin Python. I hadn't thought about moving the admin dashboard to it. (I sorta like the separate port.) I've had a couple domains hosted for some time, so I've just leveraged it for WX.