MintUpload 2, featuring FTP support

Introduction

MintUpload is the little tool which pops up when you right-click on a file and select “upload”. Until now mintUpload was mostly used as a way to share files by uploading them to a public place somewhere on one of Linux Mint’s servers and by sending the corresponding URL to friends and family members (or to anybody really..). Some people also bought Mint-Space accounts and were able to set up mintUpload to add an additional upload service to it. These people could then share files in a similar manner but instead of using a public storage space and being limited to 2 days, they could use their 1GB of Web space and have their files kept there indefinitely.

Some people mentioned that mintUpload was great at sharing files with others but not so much at actually “uploading” them and we got a lot of requests to add FTP support to that tool.

Initially mintUpload was designed with novice users in mind, people who wanted to share large files with each others and who didn’t know what FTP meant or where to get free web space to store them. After gathering some feedback, we’ve come to realize that mintUpload also got popular with experienced users, people who even had their own FTP accounts and wanted a quick way to upload files to it without launching an FTP client. So we added FTP support to MintUpload by defining another type of service and letting the user define his own FTP services.

Installation

To install MintUpload you need the Romeo repositories. Perform an “apt update” and an “apt install mintupload” in a terminal.

If you don’t have Romeo set up, you can grab the packages from here:

Configuration

MintUpload lets you define “upload services” by adding files in /etc/linuxmint/mintUpload/services/

Here’s an example of an FTP upload service:

type=FTP
name=My own FTP service
host=myhost.com
user=myusername
pass=mypassword
path=myuploads

The “path” is optional, it lets you define where within your FTP service you want the files to be uploaded. In this example we’re not uploading them in the root folder, but within a directory called “myuploads”.

MintUpload will use any service defined with that format and saved as a file within /etc/linuxmint/mintUpload/services/.

Translations

MintUpload 2 will be one of the featured improvements coming with Linux Mint 6 Felicia. We’re actively trying to get the community to translate this tool. If you happen to speak another language than English, please help us translate mintUpload 2 by participating to this forum thread:

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=17551

Bug reports and feedback

Tell us what you think by posting a comment on this blog post. Report bugs here as well.

Note: Some people also asked for SFTP support. This won’t be in the scope for Mint 6 but we’ll work on it for future releases.

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15 comments

  1. Cool beans. I’ll probably stick with a classic FTP client for websites, but for single files this looks like a great tool.

  2. i like it. it’s the first tool that’s driven me to try something from romeo. i have an ftp server on the computer that my printer is plugged into (can’t set up a proper print server, linspire 5, ugh) and i ftp my files over there. i would just plug my printer into to computer i typed on but linspire for some reason is the only one that likes to talk to my printer. this tool will make it much easier to send files. thank you.

  3. Its a really great addition! I have started to use it already.

    However, the ability to send multiple files (or even directories) would be even more great. I.e. I’d like to select several files in Nautilus, right click and send them using mintUpload.

  4. Feature request: Each users have individual service definition on each $HOME. (e.g. ~/.linuxmint/mintUpload )

  5. I just tested this service out using Mint 6 on my own FTP account. It is simple to set up and worked without a hitch. This is a very nice innovation.

    Thanks for putting this in Linux Mint.

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