dropservice

A rudimentary, lightweight, file send service for your internet server.

Architecture

%%{init: {"theme": "dark"}}%%

graph LR
    subgraph Internet
        Client[Client]
        DNS["drop.mydomain.com"]
    end

    subgraph Server
        nginx["nginx<br>Reverse Proxy"]
        DropService["<code>dropservice:8080</code><br>Python Flask API"]
        DropFolder["<code>/srv/drops</code><br/>filesystem"]
    end

    Client -->|HTTP Upload/Download| DNS
    DNS -->|DNS| Server
    nginx --> DropService
    DropService -->|Read/Write| DropFolder

Loading

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and adjust as needed:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Default	Description
UPLOAD_PATH	/srv/drops	Directory where uploads are stored
PORT	8080	Port the Flask server listens on
UPLOAD_PASSWORD	(required)	Password required to upload files

Deploying

Automated setup (recommended)

setup.sh handles everything on a Debian/Ubuntu server: installs dependencies, deploys the app to /opt/dropservice, configures systemd, obtains a TLS certificate via Cloudflare DNS challenge, and sets up nginx.

Prerequisites:

• A Cloudflare API token with Zone → DNS → Edit permission (scoped to the target zone)

Run the setup script

DOMAIN=drop.mydomain.com sudo -E ./setup.sh

Manual setup

Local development

This project uses uv for dependency management:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv sync
uv run python main.py

Filesystem

mkdir -p /srv/drops
chown www-data:www-data /srv/drops

systemd

Place the project at /opt/dropservice, then:

# /etc/systemd/system/drop.service
[Unit]
Description=File drop service
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/opt/dropservice
EnvironmentFile=/opt/dropservice/.env
ExecStart=/opt/dropservice/.venv/bin/python main.py
Restart=always
User=www-data

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

systemctl enable --now drop

nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name drop.mydomain.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name drop.mydomain.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/drop.mydomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/drop.mydomain.com/privkey.pem;

    client_max_body_size 0;
    proxy_read_timeout 600;
    proxy_request_buffering off;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}

If you change PORT in .env, update the proxy_pass port accordingly.