AeroFS - Unlimited P2P File Sync | Hacker News Reader

AeroFS - Unlimited P2P File Sync

aerofs.com

202 pointsmakeramen56 comments

well this is an unexpected but pleasant surprise :)

I suppose this is a good opportunity to let you guys know that the project IS very much alive and kicking still, and we've just released a new set of invites today (which I suppose is why we got posted to HN today, thanks!)

We've been very busy with coding and work, which is why we haven't really been updating the blog, but if you have any questions I'll be happy to continue answering them here

edit: FYI, the original discussion is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731

I know a blog seems low priority, but it'd probably be good to do at least some kind of occasional "We are alive!" update.

I checked out the project, saw "July 22" and automatically assumed it's yet another dead project. Glad to hear it's being worked on!

Agreed. We've been incredibly focused on the code and working with the early alpha users, so we've been neglecting the blog and our social media presence. We're working on fixing that.

Do you support automatic versioning like Dropbox does?

Can we set up our own "cloud" server? I assume that would be as simple as getting a server somewhere and running the software on it. Related: Do you have a CLI alongside the GUI?

we don't support versioning in the sense of rolling back to an older version (yet). This is on our to do list. We do internal versioning for the purposes of conflict resolution though.

You can definitely setup your own "cloud" server just by running the software, but we don't have a CLI just yet. This is fairly high on the to do list though, as there's been a lot of interest in that feature!

To me, the cloud server is the biggest feature. I'm one of your alpha users and while I am impressed with the potential of the project, Ubuntu is not really a server OS. I would love to be able to throw it on a Red Hat box I have in the data center and have my own private cloud.

Well to follow that thought, I actually do run Ubuntu in the datacenter (we'll have to debate that one another time) but last time I checked the Ubuntu package for AeroFS was GTK/some other UI based package and I couldn't see any command line mechanisms in the package to let me manage things on server.

Would love to see that tided up because then this becomes a mechanism for distributing files to the cluster super easy for my "normal end users", plus the cloud benefits illumin8 is referring to.

So far i must say that aerofs provides some features i'm missing elsewhere. Most importantly the possibility to have some directories synced with the cloud and some only on LAN/private.

Aerofs/Yuri have been very responsive and friendly on mail support, i like that a lot!

Thanks guys, and keep up the good work!

Yuri, what i am missing is some way to mark a directory to sync with the cloud. Usecase: I have some Windows directories in c:\users\xxx\ that i'd like to keep in sync. Obviously i can't link them to the aerofs-drive..

And now, to the 64bit linux version.. ;)

So sad that I missed this phase of invites, as this is something I've been looking for. A dropbox replacement, in filesystem, that has unlimited size. What could be better?

I signed up for your beta a year ago, I even chatted with you and begged you for one but I still haven't gotten my invite :(

My sincere apologies, we've been releasing invites at a slower pace in order to give us some time to solve some pressing bugs. Invites should start coming out quicker now :)

I got one now, thanks! No 64-bit version :(

we're working on it right now :)

Is this simple file sync service or a full distributed filesystem implementation?

EDIT: To be clear, I didn't mean 'simple' as in easy to implement or trivial or any other negative sense. But more in a functional goal sense, like 'uncomplicated'.

It's a fully distributed filesystem implementation.

I asked because it wasn't clear form the website. The tagline says file sync, what details there were said distributed filesystem.

So, for example, the total data stored and accessible in the system can exceed the local storage size of any individual participating node?

What's the performance like? (A sync service will be as fast, or slow, as local storage, but a distributed system can be a lot faster, or slower.)

How are you handling it when nodes which were previously added to the system are unavailable? For example, a user with a desktop and a laptop who stores a pile of data on the system, what happens when the desktop is off? Do you have control over what data is available on the laptop, and what happens when you try and access data which is currently unavailable?

To echo your update on the original question: while AeroFS is a distributed filesystem with quite complicated mechanisms underneath, we work very hard to make AeroFS dead simple to use. Following this philosophy, we've implemented the features that you mentioned but they're currently disabled/hidden for the sake of simplicity.

Regarding offline computers: if the only computers that host a file are offline, the file data will be unavailable. Currently, offline files are invisible in Finder/Explorer/etc. Because the current system only supports full replication, having offline files should be a rare case.

Regarding performance: it's crucial to us. Lots of efforts has been made (and even more to be made) to ensure the filesystem has comparable performance to local storage; sync performance is another area that we invest a lot of time in.

Only full replication. So not a good idea for small devices.

Is there a offline mode only? If I have a laptop and a desktop and I want them to be in sync but only when I'm at home so I don't 3G or my friend's bandwidth.

We do support LAN-only sync (i.e. on an isolated ad-hoc network), which is what I think you're asking for :)

This is still in invite-only phase, and while I do have an account, I'm not actively using it yet for my primary files because there are still some features it lacks over Dropbox, namely:

* can't choose where local files are cached, it assumes where you want them

* no way to back up more than 1G to their "cloud", ie, no paid plans yet, which I would really like to have at least for my most unreplaceable files

* no way to share individual directories with other users, you must share entire "libraries" as they call them, which are basically top-level folders on your aerofs drive

* no way to make files publicly available for download

Other than those points, I think the service is a fantastic idea, and I do eagerly look forward to being able to switch from Dropbox for my photos, documents, etc. However, the above limitations mean that I can really only use it for a few extra things that I don't have room for on my Dropbox account, eg, music.

actually all of them are on our todo list--three of the four are already implemented but yet to be exposed to the user :)

How will you be licensing and pricing it once it reaches 1.0? Any plans for making it available under a free software license, dual or otherwise? I know quite a few people who'd be inclined to pay for and contribute to a solution of the kind you provide and Dropbox and Ubuntu One don't (very decentralized, secure, fast, works local-only) with the condition that it's free-as-in-freedom.

Interesting/cool product.

One thing that threw me off - the term 'Aero' (for me) implied Windows only... No real easy solution there as I don't expect (or even think you need) to change the name, but maybe adding something like 'cross-platforming file sync without servers'.

Awesome none-the-less though!

As another datapoint, it didn't for me. It implied storing things in air.

I was vaguely aware of the Windows thing, but to me Aero == bubbly chocolate

I could go for some Mikado...

According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size#Asymmetric_algorithm_k..., their choice in using 1024 bit keys might be a bit short-sighted.

thanks for pointing this out! we'll investigate this further and may increase the key length as necessary.

can you my own key?

I've been waiting for someone to create this.

Since libTorrent was released, I figured someone would do something like this. No idea if Aero is using libTorrent, but the idea was a natural evolution.

This looks well executed, thanks. Can't wait to see the next steps.

SSH and rsync? Or even better, use hg/bzr/git to maintain a version history of the files and then just sync across devices (it's uber easy with Mercurial, not sure about the other two). I personally use the latter (Mercurial).

At that point, why not use SparkleShare to simplify it?

Either way, hg/git/bzr don't work for a lot of cases, because they are extremely inefficient for synchronizing large files, such as music, photos, video, etc.

Maybe because SparkleShare hasn't even been released yet?

True RE: large files that don't really need to be versioned. I use a mix of shell scripts that manage rsync'ing large files and mercurial for anything that isn't binary.

Or use unison, which is similar to rsync, but works 'both ways'

Or use Tra, by Russ Cox (Plan 9 and Go guru). It can handle more than two machines.

Unison is unfortunately no longer under development.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/status.html

true, though the devs still use it and release bug fixes.

Theres nothing to rule out folks taking active ownership of dev work on the project, eg take the time to go to their svn repo http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison//svn-instructions... and eg run hg/git/darts import on the repo...

Also, if you look at the svn repo, its been touched with as recently as the past 8 weeks. thats pretty good for a project thats not active

unison is quite nice, but it does require being both sides, which can be problematic sometimes.

Another annoyance with unison is that you must have the same version of unison on both hosts. It's a pain if you have (say) 2 different releases of ubuntu.

even behind your pesky office firewall

Curious - can you sync between two such locations (nat/default deny/no udp)? i.e. will you bounce connections through your host or does one side have to open an inbound port?

It would seem perhaps that our impressions of "pesky office firewalls" are a bit different :(

http://www.aerofs.com:8080/signup

Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.aerofs.com:8080

Just fixed. It's now https://www.aerofs.com/signup instead :)

aww, thank you!

I hate to say it but I would use this if my peers were just my Facebook friends. not that I don't trust 1024 bit encryption, I just don't like my info on strangers boxes even thought it is encrypted

Is my disk space on used to store data for others in the p2p network?

not unless you've explicitly invited those people to share/collaborate on files with you!

I've been using Wuala for last 2 years, and I am very happy.. I sotre there all my important data.. private documents, projects and stuff I want to share.. all my data is encypted and reduntantly stored in the web and peers, atomatic sync, sharing, p2p.. its even better than dropbox because I can trade space so I have about 10 GB for free and my data si truly encrypted so even the provider cant acces them.

http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/features

How is this different from Wuala?

I am guessing it's different by giving you full control over whom you are sharing your disk space with. And, perhaps, by having less blurred focus as an app in general and not trying to be social disk/file collaboration sharing/discovery/you-name-it everything like Wuala did.

I remember talking to one of the devs some months ago when first signing up. Fun guy, great product.

It's a shame that I never got an invite, can't wait to get my hands on this :)

What will your TOS be - what if something like a Wikileaks mirror is done across your system?

http://www.aerofs.com/tos.html

they are certainly covered if they wanted to prevent it.

Is there a way I can use this to replace Unison, which I lean heavily on but am unhappy with?

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

I love the top image. Check out the file "How to earn HN karma"

I think you found out :)

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