# iPhone: Saving downloaded files to a network drive



## maconvert (Oct 1, 2007)

Hello,

Hopefully I haven't posted this twice, but I posted this 2 hours ago and it hasn't shown up yet.

Anyway, I’m thinking of getting an iPhone when the 32GB phones come out.

However, what I’m really interested in is whether you can mount a network drive onto an iPhone and use that to save files to.

At home I have an Ubuntu Linux download PC that’s running Deluge (torrent downloader) and I’ve shared an Autoload folder on that machine.

Basically, Deluge looks in the Autoload folder for torrent files and when it finds one it starts downloading the torrent and then moves the torrent file somewhere else.

So, what I want to do is surf the internet using my iPhone on my home wifi network and then save .torrent files (using my iPhone) to the networked Autoload folder.

Is this possible?

Please let me know.

Cheers!


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Hi,

At the moment - no. The iPhone does not have any ability to download files from Safari, and without copy and paste it makes it a bit tedious to enter a URL into a webpage that could download it to that folder for you (or operate like Clutch in Tranmission).

However it is theoretically possible to create a system to do so - my best guess is that it would involved a Javascript bookmark requesting a file on your computer that triggers it to download the file to that specific folder. Quite involved and most likely error prone as most files you will click on are preset to download rather than give you a URL you could use the JavaScript bookmark on.

That said it could all change tomorrow with the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement.


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## maconvert (Oct 1, 2007)

Seeing as the iPhone can use your wifi connection to surf the net, it seems lame that it can't access shared folders easily. Hopefully they've fixed this in 3.0.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

FarFinder.

FarFinder: Remote access by web browser and iPhone to your Mac OS X files


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## maconvert (Oct 1, 2007)

Hi Guys,

I may have found another method that doesn't require any new software on your phone, but I need someone to try this out on an actual iPhone.

1)	
Using Safari, navigate to a web site that has a file you’d like to download onto another computer (i.e. Linux computer on your network).

2)	
Perform the iPhone equivalent of a right-click on the link for that file (forgive me but I’m using Safari on a Windows XP computer right now) and select “Copy Link”.

3)	
Go to your favorite web-based email provider (in my case Gmail) and start a new message.

4)	
Add an attachment to your message, but instead of grabbing a file from your iPhone (I’m not even sure if you’d have this option) paste the download link that you just copied into the “File name” space.

5)	
Send the email to the computer that you want the file to appear on.

Now, I was able to get this to work using Safari on a PC, but I’m not sure if it will work on an iPhone.

The reason that this is cool is because I’ve just figured out how to write a Linux script that will check a dedicated Gmail account, download emails from it and then, if the email has the right subject (i.e. Torrents) it will download all of the attachments to a folder on the computer. In my case I will get the script to download the attachments (torrent files) to the Deluge “Auto” (watched folder) on my Ubuntu PC. Deluge will then download these files for me. This will allow me to hang out in the living room (or anywhere in the world really) and download movies, software, and entire music libraries to my heart’s content. 

Anyway, if somebody could verify that this is possible on a 3G iPhone (with the latest firmware) that would be extremely cool!

Cheers.


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## JustAMacUser (Oct 21, 2007)

maconvert said:


> Hi Guys,
> 
> I may have found another method that doesn't require any new software on your phone, but I need someone to try this out on an actual iPhone.--redacted


Yeah... I don't think this is going to work because the iPhone doesn't have copy/paste. Unless you a) wait for the iPhone 3.0 software release or b) jailbreak the existing firmware and install one of the third-party copy/paste plugins.

Actually, jailbreaking an iPhone would allow you to save files from Safari as there's an jailbreak plugin that will do that. And you can also install software to share files, etc.

However, the easier method for all of this is probably just installing a simple web server on the torrent client that will do this for you. For example, I use Transmission which includes a web interface. I can then manage my torrents from anywhere without actually sitting in front of the machine.


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