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

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

#241

Post by kryogen1c »

beardbound wrote: post #235
rcarmo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it. That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.

I use Google drive, but the Linux support was awful and I started using insync. It's about $25 for a lifetime license and I love it. I run Ubuntu with encrypted home and have for years. It works great and I highly recommend it, and I don't work there, just a happy user. The Nautilus integration is decent too.

Not trying to rain on your parade, I hope it fills your use case.

However, my IT company onboarded a media-intense client with insync and it has been nothing but a nightmare. There are hardcoded limits (like only syncing two files at a time, IIRC) that make it effectively useless for anything beyond small, personal use. It's cheap and you get what you pay for.

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

#243

Post by exikyut »

Zak wrote: post #186
antoineMoPa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me that I could build a startup with 3 lines of bash? (EDIT: and a fancy easy windows version)

A great many successful tech companies can be described in terms of more consumer-friendly Unix tools. Slack has the better part of a billion dollars in funding for what's essentially resource-hungry IRC with pictures. Dropbox does little you couldn't accomplish with a server and rsync. What I'm really eager to see is git for everyone else.

What would "everyone else" do with Git? It's a Rube Goldberg solution implementing a highly specific set of ways to do file versioning.

Most cloud storage providers offer rudimentary versioning; are you referring to the idea of promoting commits to being first-class? It would need to be baked into Word, Excel and similar, and those tools already have builtin version tracking, as horrible(?) as it is, so... :/

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

#244

Post by xxpor »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #242

Why do they need to directly support the underlying filesystem? Can't they have support for the high level fs api? Sure not as performant but at least will work.

read the post. they need xattrs support from the file system. now, why btrfs wouldn't work is beyond me.

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

#245

Post by ronjouch »

Androider wrote: post #231
rcarmo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it. That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.

On the contrary, Ubuntu 18.04 dropped the home directory encryption entirely and now only supports full disk encryption.

Indeed: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes#Other_base...

> "The installer no longer offers the encrypted home option using ecryptfs-utils. It is recommended to use full-disk encryption instead for this release."

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

#246

Post by znelis »

justinclift wrote: post #128
mxuribe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you kindly provide recommendations? I'm looking for a sync service which can run on windows AND linux (which is why onedrive and google drive are out)...and i'm willing to pay a fair monthly fee.

rsync.net seems to get mentioned around here every now and again. I haven't used them though personally, so not sure of good/bad/etc. Unlike what their name (rsync) suggests, they do seem to support Windows clients and aren't *nix only: https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows.html

I had a pretty underwhelming experience with rsync.net and their cheaper version without snapshots a year ago. Speeds where initially 1MB/s on a gigabit connection between Sweden and their Switzerland location. After complaining they exempted me from traffic shaping and I got 2-4MB/s instead.

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

#248

Post by toyg »

ape4 wrote: post #234

Its too bad there isn't a standard for Dropbox-like functionally yet. An RFC that everyone can write to.

Technically there is WebDAV. Yeah I know, but it's there and it's a spec. Another de-facto spec is rsync, iirc tarsnap was basically built on that. At some point there might have been even a business or two that offered rsync access.

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

#250

Post by djsumdog »

wlesieutre wrote: post #24
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?

I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare. That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.

No stacked encryption on top of ext4. LUKS+ext4 should still work (since it's visible to Dropbox as just ext4 with cryptsetup/LUKS handling the underling container).
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