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FileSender

FileSender is a service that allows users to share data easily and securely. It is possible to send and receive data via a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) as well as a Command Line Interface (CLI) using the Filesender API. These instructions show how to use both the web-based GUI and command line to send and receive data using FileSender.

While FileSender can be used as a file transfer service, it's real strength is file sharing. FileSender can encrypt potentially sensitive or proprietary data with one or more people. Data shared on the REANNZ FileSender service will expire and be removed after seven or fifteen days (your choice).

Be aware that some types of files cannot be transferred to Filesender. For example, files with the extension .exe. It is also known that extensions containing an underscore _ are not allowed.

FileSender: Web-based GUI

Sending Data using the REANNZ FileSender Website

  1. Go to https://filesender.reannz.co.nz
  2. If asked, click Login and Sign-in through your Tuakiri login. You may not need to do this if you have already signed into FileSender before.
  3. You can then drag & drop or click to select a file to transfer or you can select an entire directory to upload to FileSender

Receiving Data using the REANNZ FileSender Website

  1. Go to your emails where you should have been sent an email from FileSender.
  2. Click on the Download link in the email link. This will take you to a FileSender website where you can download your files.
  3. You will be presented a list of the files that you can download. Click on the FileSender Download Icon icon. This will download your file to you downloands folder on your computer.

If you would like to download all files together in a tar or zip file, you can do this by clicking on the Download as single (.zip) file or the Download as single (.tar) file button.

FileSender: Command Line

Sending Data using the filesender command line utility

Initialising your FileSender Configuration

To send data to your FileSender account using the command line, we first have to configure FileSender You only need to do this once.

  1. Go to https://filesender.reannz.co.nz
  2. If asked, click Login and Sign-in through your Tuakiri login. You may not need to do this if you have already signed into FileSender before.
  3. Click My profile at the top-right of the page.
  4. Near the bottom of the page under Remote authentication, click the New API secret button. This will create a new authenticator secret key.

  5. In the terminal on the machine you would like to send/receive data from, type:

    mkdir -p ~/.filesender

  6. Open the filesender.py.ini file (e.g. nano ~/.filesender/filesender.py.ini to open with the text editor nano) and add the following, where you need to replace:

    • TUAKIRI_LOGIN_EMAIL with your Tuakiri login email (This is your university or industrial email)
    • FILESENDER_API_KEY with the new authenticator secret key from step 4.
    [system]
base_url = https://filesender.reannz.co.nz/rest.php
default_transfer_days_valid = 10

[user]
username = TUAKIRI_LOGIN_EMAIL
apikey = FILESENDER_API_KEY

    Note: Do not modify the default_transfer_days_valid parameter. Doing so can cause the transfer to fail with a 500 error.

    Close and save with ctrl x, ctrl y, Enter

Sending data using the command line

Once you have completed your FileSender configuration, you can upload files to FileSender by typing into the terminal:

module load FileSender
filesender -p -r recipient@email.co.nz research-data-file.txt

where:

  • recipient@email.co.nz: This is the email address of the person to send your data. This can also be your own email address if you are wanting move data between your local machine and mahuika.
  • research-data-file.txt This is the file you would like to send. This can be any file, except files with excluded extensions mentioned at the top of this page (eg. exe files)

You can find more options for filesender by running filesender --help

We recommend sending multiple files by making an archive (also known as a tarball):

tar cvf mydata.tar file1 file2 file3
# or an entire directory
tar cvf mydata.tar directory1

To untar the tarball:

tar xvf mydata.tar

Receiving data using the command line

  1. Click on the Download link in the FileSender email. This will take you to a FileSender website where you can download your files.
  2. Right-click on the FileSender Download Icon icon and choose Copy Link Address

  3. In your terminal (in either your local machine or Mahuika), run the following command:

    curl -O -J -L -R "<copied_link>"

    NOTE: replace with the path you copied. Keep the double quotation "" marks as these are needed.