"DIY Dropbox" or "2-way directory (r)sync with proper deletion" | Hacker News Reader

"DIY Dropbox" or "2-way directory (r)sync with proper deletion"

github.com

82 pointssickill32 comments

Unison anyone? http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

I've been using Unison successfully on critical documents for over 5 years.

I've just started using Unison and it exactly fits my needs.

Unlike dropbox, it only does work when I run it, and I can manually sort through the conflicts when I choose to run it (which is a good thing).

It also doesn't require a central server, so I can just use it to sync my laptop and PC.

Tarsnap is used for offsite backup, which I trust much more than myself or dropbox.

Unison has mostly been trouble for me. I'm definitely in need of a replacement for it. Doing point to multipoint syncing, it tends to get confused and need to be manually resynchronized; and above a certain total directory byte size, which I've long since exceeded, it can't sync at all (and you have to manually break your directory into pieces and sync them separately.)

Simple 2 way sync is old news, there are hundreds of applications for it.

Dropbox adds "cloud" storage, versioning, web access and more importantly: ease of use.

and DHT for instant uploading.

Sometimes it's not acceptable to store data on external server without root on it. For these kind of uses Unison (mentioned in previous comments) is decent solution, but also AeroFS (aerofs.com), which works much smoother (less collision problems).

Anyway syncing data on several devices must became standard soon.

AeroFS also has a Windows port that works, too. I had no end of trouble with the Unison port.

> and more importantly: ease of use. I'll take "Business Risk" for $200, Alex.

Does anyone know how sparkleshare (http://sparkleshare.org/) compares?

Tried it a couple of weeks ago and could not get it to sync between a couple of Mac machines. Dropped the experiment soon after.

I've been using unison for exactly this for ages. I was wondering whether this will add automatic uploading on file change, but alas, all it suggest is using cron for it.

If you have your DIY solution, maybe you can add GAMIN [0] to the mix. There are quite straightforward python bindings.

[0] http://people.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/overview.html

https://code.google.com/p/lsyncd/

"Lsyncd watches a local directory trees event monitor interface (inotify). It aggregates and combines events for a few seconds and then spawns one (or more) process(es) to synchronize the changes. By default this is rsync. Lsyncd is thus a light-weight live mirror solution that is comparatively easy to install not requiring new filesystems or blockdevices and does not hamper local filesystem performance."

Lsyncd works pretty well. It was much simpler to install, operate and develop for than the MogileFS solution it replaced.

http://code.google.com/p/mogilefs

http://danga.com/mogilefs

Dropbox has also clients for Android and iOS. Mobile sync would indeed be great combined with local hosting. Sparkle Share made an attempt, but it's still far behind Dropbox. This "DIY Dropbox" is not even beginning to scratch the surface of what is available in Dropbox. Perhaps an attempt to start development on a competitive DIY solution, but far from a replacement.

Calling this "Dropbox" is misleading without automatic uploading when files change. Bummed.

You may want to check out our our DIY dropbox attempt: https://github.com/bazaarlabs/gitdocs

Automatic uploading, web front-end and versioning.

What about Lipsync? [1] I believe it was mentioned here on HN when the project first appeared.

1. https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync

People are claiming in the comments that this isn't new, but this is the first such _open source_ program I've seen since Unison, which I am badly in need of a replacement for. So I for one will check it out.

sparkleshare?

edit: seems like i'm the only one mentioning sparkleshare, so here are some links:

http://sparkleshare.org/

https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare

https://github.com/wimh/SparkleShare windows branch

I couldn't find this on their pages - does anyone know if it clones the whole repo, or just the current versions? Also, can it get rid of old versions of files to save space on the server?

Would be curious how you guys would compare this library to gitdocs, our DIY dropbox attempt: https://github.com/bazaarlabs/gitdocs

Ours includes a full web front-end, versioning, 'cloud' (git) storage, and relatively easy install. Oh, unix cross-platform too (with some windows kinks being worked out).

Why not use aerofs.com? I mean thats the goal, server-less dropbox. The server is just a communication means, it does not store anything unless you ask it to.

> Sign Up for an Invite

That's why.

Also closed-source, proprietary software.

At some point convenience trumps oss. Ask for an invite, you will get one fairly fast. Unlike dropbox it actually works when I need it (new computer) vs dropbox which coughs blood when I need it, and works fine when I don't [dropbox initial dl speed is 0.01kbps for a few hrs, aerofs caps out my bandwidth].

> Ask for an invite, you will get one fairly fast.

ander.faier@gmail.com

Pair with a Guardfile and guard-shell to sync whenever a local file changes –

  https://github.com/guard/guard-shell

I would take a modified Tortoise SVN client over this about 100% of the time.

Are some of these cross-platform?

I'd say that this could really take off if they implemented federated storage, such that there was sync'ing across multiple storage instances (a semi-cloud, if you will). Furthermore, I see where encryption could be used to facilitate ad-hoc federation among people who might not normally trust each other, like a Tor of storage.

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