Transferring large files peer to peer without using torrents or third party cloud solutions

 This post take care of an issue which we sometimes encounter which is how to transfer a large file which is more than the size allowed for third party cloud storage solutions which require hefty annual charges. 

Torrents is the best method, but, sometimes torrents are blocked in the internet service provider end and not so intuitive for the first time user.

The method I would be describing would be using age old FTP for this purpose. I would be breaking it up in some steps.

Step 1 : Install IIS in your windows 10 professional system . 

• Open "Turn Windows features on or off":

  • Open the Start menu. 
  • Type "features" and select "Turn Windows features on or off". 
• Select IIS:

  • Tick the "Internet Information Services" checkbox. 
  • You may need to expand the "Internet Information Services" node to select specific features like "Web Management Tools" or "World Wide Web Services". 
• Confirm and Install:

  • Click "OK" to apply the changes and start the installation process. 
  • Wait for the installation to complete. 
• Verify Installation:
• 
  
• • After installation, you can verify by searching for "IIS" in the Start menu and launching "Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager". 

  Step2: Note down the private and public IP of this server. you can use ipconfig to note the private IP address and google for the public IP of the system. Note these IP address. The public IP address can change if router is rebooted
• 
  
• Step3 : setup a FTP server in the IIS

click here to open a how-to

Step-4: Download Filezila software

Step-5: configure NAT in the internet router

consult your router documentation. the NAT configured in this example redirects the requests arriving

at ports from 49152 to 65134 to port 23 in a private IP ( the IP where the FTP server is hosted 

like 192.168.1.6)

This is done because FTP uses a passive algorithm which throws requests at different high ports

 which have to be redirected to a single port 23.

Step-6: open filezila software 

this is how it would look in disconnected state

fill the public IP and port 23 and click on quick connect, this is how the screen should look now

the directory structure of the shared ftp folder should be visible . This is a test to see if filezila can access the folder on your laptop through your public IP . Disconnect after the test is successful

 

Step 7: give all read/write permissions to the shared ftp folder for "Everyone" by right clicking the folder 

Step 8 : give the public IP and the port to the friend/person and ask him to download and install  the filezila software  who wants to upload/download the file from the this FTP folder. he can simply drag and drop content from his local folder to this ftp folder as shown in pic above

STEP 9; (Most important) : Revoke all permissions to folder delete all port redirects & stop the FTP server from IIS once your transfer is completed in interest of security. 

Hope this short guide was useful!

installing linux to laptop having uefi bios

 the linux distributions based on older distributions are mostly based on MBR partitioning scheme. These distributions are not detected by UEFI BIOS. 

To install linux in laptops having UEFI BIOS, the following steps can be followed:-

Preparing The boot pen drive

1. download Rufus. Rufus is  a small utility about 1.5 MB in size which can make flash drives/pen drive bootable.  Rufus can make both MBR type which is used by older conventional BIOS and GPT type which is used by newer  UEFI bios when reading the partition tables of the inserted pen drive. both MBR & GPT is available as dropdown in Rufus, However, whether UEFI is supported depends on the ISO of the OS which is downloaded. In case the ISO does not support UEFI, the GPT option won't be available in drop down. 

2. The UEFI bios first reads the EFI partition on the GPT partitioned pen drive to boot the OS. The EFI partition is FAT 32 partition usually about 500 MB for Linux systems where the bootloader is stored. The bootloader in case of MBR based system is GRUB. 

3. The UEFI BIOS does have support for legacy MBR based pen drives . but that is only for loading live OS from pen drive . For installing the OS in the internal hard drive, only EFI based boot is usually possible in such systems. 

4. pressing F2 to go into bios, the EFI file of the inserted pen drive is visible as EFI entry . If there are no EFI bootloaders present in the pen drive, this field will be blank denoting that the pen drive can't boot the system. 

5. The advantage of GPT partitioning is support of drives more than 2 TB, which is the upper limit for MBR type of partitioning. 

INSTALLING LINUX ON HARD DRIVE 

After trying the distro as live USB drive, if you decided to install , there should be a install app in the desktop itself, launching the app and follow these steps for completion and install of OS in hard drive. The following points may be noted for partitioning of drive using utility like GPARTED:-

1. mark 500 MB as FAT32 and label the partition as /efi/ boot. This is where the bootloader for EFI will be installed ( which would be visible to BIOS as stated earlier)

2. mark a space equal to that of RAM in the laptop ( 8 GB or 16 GB) as Swap space.

3. remaining space can be marked as / (root) partition

Now, you can install and follow the other steps for completion.