Mercury

A simple file exchange server for home and small organisations.

Mission Statement

Exchanging files within a private network or via the internet is, under some circumstances, still challenging. Mercury is going to be a file exchange server with following features:

• Exchange files without the need to create an account at any service provider
• Use any device with a web browser, like your phone, tablet, pc,... (no additional software requiered)
• Run within your own network, i.e. a single board computer

Public services providing similar capabilities are:

• WeTransfer
• SendGB
• Filemail

No-Goals

Marcury is not trying to relpace any of the following solutions:

• File synchronisation: Marcury is not synchronising any files, rather use Syncthing or any public service like Dropbox.
• Network file system: Mercury is not a network file system like NFS, SMB, WebDAV... in contrary Mercury should allow file exchange without managing user accounts.

Planned Features

To fulfill the set goals following features should be implementd:

• Easy to use web UI for file upload and download (done)
• Hidden files, allow access only with direct link or secret file ID
• Custom data retention time on file upload
• Malware check on file upload (done)
• Optional password protection
• File and data set size limits (done)
• Filtering by name, type, tag
• Directory support (done)
• Access to datasets from public internet (IP restricted)

Ideas

• Display download links as QR codes to share files on mobile devices
• Configureable tag constraints
• Support large files (> 2GB) by automated file splitting on the client side
• Timed availability of uploaded files, so the file becomes available only at a previously specified date and time
• Maximum number of wrong password attempts on password protected files
• Data encryption at rest
• Email notifications on uploaded files, e.g. on download event, clean up, failed authorisation attempt,...
• Checksum to verify file identity
• Upload links to allow uploads from public internet
• Mutable data sets, for multiple users to add / remove data to same data set
• Delete option
• Optional account

Architecture

System Context

Component Diagram