ffsend is the command line client of Firefox Send. This article will show how Firefox Send and ffsend work. It’ll also detail how it can be installed and used in Fedora.
What are Firefox Send and ffsend ?
Firefox Send is a file sharing tool from Mozilla that allows sending encrypted files to other users. You can install Send on your own server, or use the Mozilla-hosted link send.firefox.com. The hosted version officially supports files up to 1 GB, and links that expire after a configurable download count (default of 1) or 24 hours, and then all the files on the Send server are deleted. This tool is still in experimental phase, and therefore shouldn’t be used in production or to share important or sensitive data.
While Firefox Send is the tool itself and can be used with a web interface, ffsend is a command-line utility you can use with scripts and arguments. It has a wide range of configuration options and can be left working in the background without any human intervention.
How does it work?
FFSend can both upload and download files. The remote host can use either the Firefox tool or another web browser to download the file. Neither Firefox Send nor ffsend require the use of Firefox.
It’s important to highlight that ffsend uses client-side encryption. This means that files are encrypted before they’re uploaded. You share secrets together with the link, so be careful when sharing, because anyone with the link will be able to download the file. As an extra layer of protection, you can protect the file with a password by using the following argument:
ffsend password URL -p PASSWORD
Other features
There are a few other features worth mentioning. Here’s a list:
- Configurable download limit, between 1 and 20 times, before the link expires
- Built-in extract and archiving functions
- Track history of shared files
- Inspect or delete shared files
- Folders can be shared as well, either as they are or as compressed files
- Generate a QR code, for easier download on a mobile phone
How to install in Fedora
While Fedora Send works with Firefox without installing anything extra, you’ll need to install the CLI tool to use ffsend. This tool is in the official repositories, so you only need a simple dnf command with sudo.
$ sudo dnf install ffsend
After that, you can use ffsend from the terminal .
Upload a file
Uploading a file is a simple as
$ ffsend upload /etc/os-release
Upload complete
Share link: https://send.firefox.com/download/058262...Bem8Z013mg
The file now can be easily share using the Share link URL.
Downloading a file
Downloading a file is as simple as uploading.
$ ffsend download https://send.firefox.com/download/058262...Bem8Z013mg
Download complete
Before downloading a file it might be useful to check if the file exist and get information about it. ffsend provides 2 handy commands for that.
$ ffsend exists https://send.firefox.com/download/88a632...L2KZIA-PaQ
Exists: true
Password: false
$ ffsend info https://send.firefox.com/download/88a632...L2KZIA-PaQ
ID: 88a6324e2a99ebb6
Downloads: 0 of 1
Expiry: 23h59m (86388s
Upload history
ffsend also provides a way to check the history of the uploads made with the tools. This can be really useful if you upload a lot of files during a scripted tasks for example and you want to keep track of each files download status.
$ ffsend history
LINK EXPIRY
1 https://send.firefox.com/download/#8TJ9QNw 23h59m
2 https://send.firefox.com/download/KZIA-PaQ 23h54m
Delete a file
Another useful feature is the possibility to delete a file.
ffsend delete https://send.firefox.com/download/2d9faa...SRI8TJ9QNw
Firefox Send is a great service and the ffsend tools makes it really convenient to use from the terminal. More examples and documentation is available on ffsend‘s Gitlab repository.