Open course sync client similar to dropbox?

zetec452

zetec452

zetec452

Soldato
Joined
15 Sep 2003
Posts
9,454
Hi,

I'd like to create my own shares services for my family etc. Is there any software similar to dropbox that will allow sync and permissions to a web share? Obviously the dropbox client is very sophisticated, I'm after something a little simpler.

Yes, I am too tight to pay dropbox $20 per month. :p.

Edit: Could a kind don change the title to opensource. Thanks. :)
 
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I'm not after the online storage but the software to create my own little storage platform. I've found a few open source projects in which do this. I'll dig them out once I get home.
 
Just a little update.

I've decided to go with a secure webdav setup on Linux and use a client called GoodSync to sync files across the WAN or LAN. Seems to work very well, not quite as elegant as dropbox but I don't have to pay for it. :p.
 
Bit late with this if you've already got a solution, but you could also take a look at Wuala - it's a slightly different approach, where as a "Pro" user you have the option to "trade" local hard drive space as well as/instead of purchasing online storage in the normal way. If your server is online 24/7, you get the same online space as the amount you contribute (up to a max of 100GB per machine), otherwise it's reduced proportionally (eg if you're online 12hrs/day and you contribute 50GB of local space, you'd get 25GB of cloud storage).

One advantage is that you wouldn't be limited by your own upload speed if you want to access files from elsewhere, although it doesn't do true delta copying (unlike DropBox/Spideroak/SugarSync etc), which could be a bit bandwidth-inefficient if you have constantly-changing large files.

The client seems quite decent, from my brief fiddling with it - simple and nicely designed, and you get the usual backup/sync features, as well as the ability to map your online storage to a drive letter or Linux mount point.

Might be worth checking out for future reference in any case. :)
 
JonRohan said:
So the trading thing. I guess if I give 50 GB to the cloud that is used by other people via the Wuala cloud? Or is it for my own use only?

I currently use mozy of offsite backup and could possibly ditch that for this and have my work in one place sync'd which would be pretty cool.
Click to expand...
Not quite sure what you're asking... as I understand it, the (say) 50GB that you allocate is used by... well, anyone I suppose - it's just encrypted data which contributes to the sum total of the cloud, with no way of knowing what it is or who it belongs to (the possible liability implications are dealt with in the documentation, basically it's a non-issue). You could even delete your local cache entirely (eg when you reformat), and as long as you continue to make the space *available* it won't affect your own online entitlement. There's a slight gotcha with that though - if you have more than 20GB of your own data online, apparently you'd need to wait for the cache to "refill" before you regain write access, although this probably wouldn't take too long, and if you keep the local cache somewhere sensible on a different partition (it's user-configurable), it's unlikely to be any sort of problem.

Similarly, your own data could be almost anywhere, divided up amongst many other members, again presumably with plenty of redundancy for when individuals become unavailable for whatever reason, whether temporarily or permanently.

I suppose the cost (or lack thereof) is the killer feature... if you allocate 100GB out of a 1TB drive, it would equate to a one-off payment of about £4 at today's prices, which compares pretty nicely to DropBox at $19.99 *per month* for 100GB of online storage. On the other hand, you'll constantly be using a certain amount of bandwidth by making your drive space available to the cloud, and there's the cost of keeping your PC powered up for between 7 and 24 hours/day (again, a non-issue if you'd be doing this anyway).

I've only just come across the scheme myself, and to be honest I haven't had time to look into it in depth, so maybe there are showstopping downsides I haven't noticed yet (hopefully not). It's definitely an interesting concept, anyway. :)
 
I think we both understand the trade feature. I've installed Wuala tonight and will give it a test over the next few days. It is a shame it cannot be run on a private network.
 
Just a heads-up, you can enter the following codes (go to Tools > Options > Buy Storage in the client), each of which will give you an additional 1GB of "bought" space for a year.

CONNECT-WITH-SUPPORT
I-KNOW-CAROLA
I-KNOW-DOMINIK
I-KNOW-FABIUS
I-KNOW-MARCEL
I-KNOW-LUZIUS
I-KNOW-MARIUS
I-KNOW-DARIO
I-KNOW-JONAS
I-KNOW-THOMAS

So if you don't fancy using the trading option straight away, you can still get 11GB (including the initial free 1GB) of normal online storage with all the client's features enabled (sync/backup/versioning), which should be handy for testing purposes.
 
Awesome, thanks. :)

Unforunately Wuala has rated my internet connection as very poor. :( I wonder how much use I'll see on the trading with a "poor" internet connection.
 
Samba? I have a directory which is shared read-only with samba, and use rsync to pull data off a couple of computers to update this directory.
 
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