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

dropboxforum.com

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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is (or at least _was_ when I last tried FDE) one major fly in this ointment: you lose the ability to reboot your machine remotely. Upon restarting it required that you enter the password, which you can only do from a local keyboard.

For such systems I consider the primary root file-system to be part of the 'bootloader'. Everything that I want to keep actually secure is inside of the encrypted PVs backing LVM volumes. Yes, this presents a security risk in that someone could (offhand I think the term is 'evil maid'?) attack the root filesystem, but they could still have done that to the bootloader anyway. Remote interaction is then required to bri…

They could not have done that to the bootloader because of SecureBoot.

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

#342
post #59

Excluding XFS is an odd choice as it's very common in the server world. I'm assuming encryptfs-ext4 has some attribute issue that prevents them for doing efficient deltas. That aside, what's the use case for encryptfs at all? Isn't it strictly worse than LUKS on the underlying volume or a volume file mounted via loopback?

They probably don’t have a lot of users who install and use the Dropbox client on a server machine.

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

#343
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Also, when you consider that being offline for an ex…

> I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Yeah, no, I don't think so. If my bus or train goe…

Really? If you lose access to your dotfiles and OneNote notebooks for 5 or 10 minutes (that would be one long tunnel) that's completely unacceptable? This also sounds like a daily commute that could have easily been planned around if that time is really that important. Besides, when I work with Keybase I copy the files to my machine ahead of time to a local directory, so I likely would never notice such a drop in connectivity.

I really doubt that in most modern environments (i.e. where smartphones are pervasive) that you are going to go very long without connectivity in an unplanned scenario.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend Syncthing. Fully open source. It is however self-hosted. But they have clients for basically everything, including mobile phones.

I used to run syncthing...but about 1 year ago (when i started with current employer) they blocked it. i forgot what port it uses, but my employer gave me the ol' wag of the finger for "using an unauthorized app". Funny how dropbox was not blocked but syncthing was.

Welcome to the world where everything except 80/443 is blocked. Sucks but you can still make things work.

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

#345
post #301
post #195

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

Yep. Dropbox is going to lose some customers. Maybe it won't be too many (compared to Windows/Mac), but the customers they will lose will be their most technical.

How many customers do you think are running RHEL as a desktop workstation and allowed to use Dropbox?

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

#347

I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently "uncommon". Fascinating perspective. EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the supported ones. Thanks for the headsmack. :-)

NTFS, HFS+, APFS and Ext4 are the supported file systems, not the ones being dropped. Btrfs is being dropped.

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

#348

I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently "uncommon". Fascinating perspective. EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the supported ones. Thanks for the headsmack. :-)

I think you misread. NTFS is one of the supported OSes

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend Syncthing. Fully open source. It is however self-hosted. But they have clients for basically everything, including mobile phones.

It doesn't support symbolic links at all, deal breaker for me. I can't afford to start duplicating content just because it can't follow a symlink.

Have you tried hard links?

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

#350
post #51

Dropbox isn't even the cheapest or best file syncing service, they're basically all a commodity at this point and if they don't want you as customers... just go elsewhere.

Why do you say it isn’t the best?

I was gonna suggest onedrive but realized they don't have a linux client. Honestly for linux, dropbox might be your best bet...
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