Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#191

Post by willtim » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #147

willtim wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unison is beautiful, as it has a formal specification with proofs of correctness for its bidirectional syncing. Bi-directional syncing is hard to get right and many devs have been subsequently shown to not understand the problem fully, for example DropBox: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/mysteriesofdropbo... My instinctive reaction is not to trust any brand new effort without more evidence of its correctne…

> formal specification with proofs of correctness for its bidirectional syncing Where can I find more information on this? Search is failing me.

There are lots of papers referenced in the "Mysteries of DropBox" paper above, but I think the full spec is here: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/unisonspec.pdf

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#192

Post by cmurf » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #108

Could people whose filesystem will no longer be supported work around this by making an ext4 filesystem in a file and mounting that file via the loop device, and moving their Dropbox directory to that?

Yes, but it's kinda ugly for regular Joe user. You'll have to know how to manage it: fragmentation, setting initial size and resizing, trimming, how to automate activating and mounting it. Etc.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#193

Post by rietta » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

What's the reason for the move? I am on LUKs+EXT4 on my development workstation as full disk encryption on all devices is mandated by corporate policy and our contracts with clients.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#194

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#195

Post by messe » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

Seems ludicrous when XFS is the default file system for RHEL.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#196

Post by omegote » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

leemailll wrote: post #101

vxNsr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it. iTunes, for those that haven't used a Mac, is REALLY slick. This has aged gloriously, thank you!

Back in the day, iTunes is the best music manager. Now it still is a great one.

Lol what.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#197

Post by thomasfedb » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

copperx wrote: post #163

thomasfedb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decent open source sync daemon for OneDrive on Linux - I'm the packager who looks after it on Fedora. With the odd exception when APIs change it just works.

OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos.

Personally I sync my git repos with git, everything else with OneDrive - that said dotfile support could be added to the client at least in theory…

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#198

Post by codemusings » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

Self-hosted Nextcloud instance + AWS for storage puts you somewhere around $10 to $20 per month depending on how much space you need. Just throwing it out there.

The sync client has worked flawelessly for me so far. Plus you get CalDAV/CardDAV right out of the box.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#199

Post by rogerbinns » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

thomasfedb wrote: post #10

The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" - of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?

What I am confused by is what they think will happen to revenue.

Step 1: "You can now use dropbox in fewer scenarios than before" Step 2: ??? Step 3: More customers paying more money

Dropbox is paid for and used in various places I work and personally because of the Linux support. (Their competitors ignore Linux for some reason.) In my case step 2 is going to be them losing at least $1,000 in annual revenue. And they won't have that the next year either (ie recurring revenue). Nor will they be part of future options for work or personal.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#200

Post by skrebbel » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

ahnick wrote: post #145

byproxy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Keybase? It has a pretty seamless files experience, I find. Open source, end-to-end encryption, Windows client, painless sync, free for 250GB...

Completely agree. I'm not sure why someone would choose Dropbox over Keybase nowadays.

Continuity? I mean, does Keybase have a business model yet? Or is it still "$bigshot_vc who is friends with the CEO believes a few crypto/security gambles are in order"?

Not meant critically, I love that they exist and found funding. It's just, as long as the model is "once the privacy shit hits the fan in some widely published scandal, we'll be the one that's ahead" there's only two outcomes: 1. It doesn't happen soon enough and Keybase runs out of runway, or 2. It happens, one of the many Keybase products becomes wildly popular because of it, and Keybase will ditch the others because "yada yada focus core business".