Q: What is so special about F*EX? A: See feature list http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/features.html and use cases http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/usecases/ Q: Why not use one of the commercial services like DropLoad, ALLPeers, YouSendIt, etc? A: * They have a file size limit of 2 GB or even less. * Their security and privacy status is unknown (ever heard of "Snowden & NSA"?). * They are not open source based. * There are no UNIX (CLI) clients for them. * They need java, active-X, flash or other evil plugins. * It is unknown how long they will exist - DropLoad and ALLPeers already have terminated their business. Q: Why name "F*EX" and not shortly "FEX"? A: At publication time there was already an (older) program named "FEX" listed on freshmeat.net. Q: Who is the author? A: The main author is Ulli Horlacher
But there are also a lot of contributors. Q: Why a camel as the logo? A: The logo was inspired by the Perl camel, but it is based on a Steiff plush camel, which rides with us on our racing tandem. The logo was drawn by my stoker Beate. http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/Vortrag/tosa.html Q: What do I need to install F*EX? A: A UNIX or Windows server with a DNS entry, smtp for outgoing email and one open and free incoming tcp port. You must have administrative rights (UNIX: root) on this server and a basic understanding of UNIX and networking. Q: What means DNS and smtp? What is a tcp port? A: Do not install F*EX. It is beyond your horizon. Q: Does F*EX support IPv6? A: Yes. Q: Can I run F*EX on Windows? A: On client side all operating systems are supported, even Windows. If you want to run a F*EX server on Windows, then see http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/fexwix.html Q: Where can I get the F*EX sources? A: F*EX server for UNIX: http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/fex.html Q: I do not want to install a F*EX server of my own, but where can I use it? A: Contact http://www.nepustil.net/ for F*EX hosting. Q: The F*EX server is all in Perl?! Isn't Perl too slow for this job? A: fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de runs on an office PC and F*EX is able to handle uploads with more than 300 MB/s. Try this with an ordinary webserver like Apache! Q: Which licence does F*EX have? And why? A: Perl Artistic free software with a special anti-military clause: http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/doc/Licence "I want peace on earth and goodwill towards men" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHU0HinVhYc Q: Is there a F*EX mailing list? A: https://listserv.uni-stuttgart.de/mailman/listinfo/fex Q: Where can I get commercial support for F*EX? A: Contact http://www.nepustil.net/ Q: Who else is using F*EX? A: For example: * German Aerospace Center http://fex.dlr.de * European Commission Institute for Energy and Transport http://fex.jrc.nl * High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart http://fex.hlrs.de * Swiss National Supercomputing Centre http://fex.cscs.ch * Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research) http://bigfiles.cnrs-gif.fr * Institut Pasteur http://dl.pasteur.fr * Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) http://parcftp.parc.com * Baden-Württembergs extended LAN http://fex.belwue.de * Deutsche Kinemathek Museum für Film und Fernsehen http://upload.deutsche-kinemathek.de Q: Is F*EX secure? A: F*EX is written in Perl which does not have common security problems with buffer overruns, segmentation faults, heap and stack corruption. F*EX does not use an extra web server or a (SQL) database, so no typical web attacks are possible. F*EX was analysed by security company revshell.com and labeled as "secure". F*EX comes with source code, so everybody can verify it. Q: Feature/design XY is missing. A: Contact the author Q: I have more/other questions than in this document! A: Ask the author