A croc, or not?

[mklym]

I can across a small file transfer program and am wondering if anyone has used it? It seems that, if it works as advertised, the program would be a good fit for the MX repos as it is suppose to be 'fast, secure and easy'.

Here is a link to the devs site and it has a link to the program on GitHub.

https://schollz.com/tinker/croc6/

I am going to try the program on a couple of my units this weekend, if time allows, but still would like to hear from anyone that has used it.

Thanks.

[Adrian]

Looks like a magic-wormhole clone. We have magic-wormhole in the repo (the command itself is "wormhole").

[mklym]

Looks like a magic-wormhole clone. We have magic-wormhole in the repo (the command itself is "wormhole").

No, not a clone. See here, from his blog:

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AFAIK, croc is the only CLI file-transfer tool does all of the following:

    allows any two computers to transfer data (using a relay)
    provides end-to-end encryption (using PAKE)
    enables easy cross-platform transfers (Windows, Linux, Mac)
    allows multiple file transfers
    allows resuming transfers that are interrupted
    does not require a server or port forwarding

In developing croc I took a lot of inspiration from other CLI tools like toss and magic-wormhole which had some but not all of the qualities above.#5

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#5 toss cleverly encodes port information in the code phrase, making it simple but it requires using connected computers (no firewalls) and the long random-ish code phrase is hard to “tell” someone. magic-wormhole has most everything (currently its missing capabilities for multiple file transfers and file resuming), but it requires installing lots of the Python ecosystem which is tricky for non-developers (and Windows users).

[Dearth]

There are few others CLI tools like this. Magic Wormhole implementation in Rust:
https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole.rs

Magic Wormhole implementation in Go:
https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william

Those above can work with the original Python implementation.

There is also a Magic Wormhole clone in Go:
https://github.com/SpatiumPortae/portal

Portal is my favourite - look at the pretty UI it has.

[Adrian]

the program would be a good fit for the MX repos

I don't see a point for having it in our repos since the most recent .deb will be on their site, for example:
https://github.com/schollz/croc/releases/tag/v9.6.5

[mklym]

Dearth, thanks for the suggestions. I made some time this afternoon and tried croc. Works as advertised. I am happy with croc.

Adrian, it was a suggestion as I thought that installing a program from the repos was favored over installing from a .deb as sometimes there were problems installing .deb files. Maybe that is no longer the case. Really does not matter to me as I am already using croc. Thanks.

[AVLinux]

as sometimes there were problems installing .deb files.

The actual problem was Debian changing their elevation to Root methodology which broke Gdebi (the most well-known graphical Deb installer) Gdebi could be fixed by changing it's launch command but that was above the pay grade of most regular Users.. MX always had a handy but hidden Thunar Custom Action to install Debs and this unfortunately remained hidden to a lot of Users until the MX Devs decided to fix the issue once and for all by including their own graphical installer for Deb files and this is a built-in solution so installing outside Debs is as always not recommended unless you're sure about the source but is now much easier thanks to the MX devs.

shot-2023-08-10_17-46-43.jpg

[FullScale4Me]

A Big box retailer sell a USB cable (USB A male >----< USB A male) with wormhole.exe built in (mini-flash drive in one end) https://www.staples.com/J-5-Create-JUC4 ... ct_2495890
It then supports copy & paste between Winblows PCs (and others - never tried it with Linux when there).

I use Barrier. It is in the MXPI and which works between my MX Linux & Windows 10/11 as mouse sharing w shared clipboard.

[Adrian]

Just one data point, I tried to use croc at work to transfer files from one Linux installation in WSL to another Linux, it didn't work (work firewall blocking the relay server?) but wormhole worked just fine.

[Dearth]

To install croc and keep it updated I recommend deb-get:
apt-get functionality for .debs published in 3rd party repositories or via direct download. It works on Debian, Ubuntu and their derivative distributions.

https://github.com/wimpysworld/deb-get

I use deb-get to install a few apps that are not available in MX repos.