Hi, I teach a CS course, and I was wondering if there is a practical way in which to setup a server that would accept student’s tar files, run some tests, and show them the results.
I could go “full unix mode” and roll up some accounts let them ssh into a server, scp their their files… but I was wondering if there is a prepacked solution for this that is nicer to the eye. And I thought maybe you know some.
I mean just for the love of God don’t spin up something on your company’s infrastructure that accepts file uploads.
Just don’t.
If you’re reading this and going “well, it’s just internal,” or “well, it doesn’t do much it just accepts this exact file type.” My god. Ask your CISA. And if they’re okay with it, cool. That’s on them.
Unless your whole business is transferring files, don’t. And even then… Don’t.
And if you’re still confused, the answer is to use another company’s infrastructure for this. Use Azure. Use AWS. Use Google cloud or even g suites. Don’t accept that liability. Let the trillionaires do it.
I mean if you put up an Internet-facing unauthenticated file acceptor it will quickly become stuffed with all sorts of garbage and aspiring malware. You definitely don’t want to hook that up to an untar and exec loop, even with some notion of sandboxing. It will just start mining Bitcoins or sending spam or something.
But if it is built properly, with only authorized users being able to upload stuff, and a basic understanding of not dropping stuff where the web server will happily execute every PHP web shell someone sticks in the slot, and the leverage to threaten people into not uploading pictures of their own or others’ butts or Iron Man (2009), I don’t see why all but the file-uploading professionals should immediately give up.
You can accept them on internal networks, just have a file size limit and don’t extract them locally, but send to some cloud service for handling. You could even have it work with email attachments if you want.
Basically:
My first method eliminates waiting to see if your students code runs fast enough. Unless complexity is part of the assignment, I’d still say go for the hash.
It’s also less work for the professor/grader.