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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

#391

Post by rahimnathwani »

martinp wrote: post #271
anderspitman wrote: post #133

For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will e…

Syncthing is a great piece of software. I configured it on three of my machines in March and I've had zero issues since. In fact, it has worked so well that I don't even think about it. One of the machines even runs an old version found in Debian stable repos, but there has been no issues syncing with machines running newer versions. Only downside for me is that there's no iOS client.

There's a (closed source?) iOS client: fsync

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

#392

Post by Dylan16807 »

rogerbinns wrote: post #323
freehunter wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to make the argument that Dropbox doesn't support Windows, because they don't support FAT32. That's just as true as your argument that they don't support Linux, because they very much do still support Linux.

You can't install Windows on FAT32. I'm pretty sure your home directory (where the Dropbox folder is) can't be on FAT32 either. About the only thing that uses FAT32 are USB sticks smaller than 32GB. It is extremely unlikely anyone would want to run Dropbox on a FAT32 volume, and I suspect it has never worked due to the filesystem limitations. ie you would have to struggle to end up in this situation as a Windows user…

I do want to clarify that FAT32 can be up to 2TB (or more if you push up the cluster size). Microsoft just decided they wanted to be pushy in their formatting tool.

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

#393

Post by shittyadmin »

MikeHalcrow wrote: post #356
shittyadmin wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a series of issues found by with the encryption used by ecryptfs: https://defuse.ca/audits/ecryptfs.htm The full disk block-based (as opposed to this file-based) encryption is really the way to go if you want a good security and performance margin.

Author of eCryptfs and EXT4 encryption chiming in. "Series of issues?" Really? There were 3, and they were all scored "Low" by the authors for exploitability and security impact. That said, I generally agree FDE is the way to go if your platform's constraints allow for it -- but only for security. Native EXT4 encryption will give you equal or better performance than FDE primarily because the file system metadata isn'…

Ah, you're right, I had it confused with a similar analysis on EncFS which had more significantly damaging findings.

https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm

I wasn't even aware Ext4 had native encryption support though! I'll definitely have to give that a go. Thanks for the tip.

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

#394

Post by eropple »

ahnick wrote: post #386
jkaplowitz wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplanes are a common case where people have long stretches without connectivity, either due to not paying for wifi or any if the other reasons it might be unavailable or unusable. Being on a NYC subway train is an even more interesting case, because depending on the precise client setup there's often intermittent or bad connectivity but rarely a good sustained connection between stations. As in most of the world, s…

Agreed, but these are planned events where you won't have connectivity, so you can copy the files to a local folder prior to the trip. I recognize that might not be as convenient as having the system perform a push to your machine to sync it. I think in those cases I'd probably just run rsync against the keybase folder.

I know that in a day where I have to produce a live show, write a raft of code, negotiate a new job offer, and take my dog to the vet, I want to remember to copy files to a local folder.

No, wait.

I want my computer to do scutwork for me instead because that's its job.

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

#395

Post by mijowi »

anderspitman wrote: post #133

For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will e…

If you just want to get a file or files from A to B you can use rsync. It works great (although I don't know if it works on Windows)

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

#396

Post by mijowi »

fencepost wrote: post #296
copperx wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos. This does not appear to still be the case based on testing just now (creating a folder named ".foldername", containing a file named ".testfile" then verifying that they've synced up to OneDrive). Several years ago it didn't support syncing folders with a . in the name, but that was resolved 3 years ago. With Microsoft's relatively new focus on Git, I ca…

I think you can do that in explorer if you change some of the options.

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

#397

Post by copperx »

__sr__ wrote: post #340
copperx wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Err... I can’t imagine a scenario where one would want to use OneDrive/Dropbox to sync git repositories. It’s like having your local Dropbox folder inside your local OneDrive folder — only a lot worse.

I keep my .tex, .md, and .org files under source control, but I don't bother syncing to GitHub. I just back them up with the rest of my personal (non-code) files.

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

#398

Post by johnchristopher »

martinp wrote: post #271
anderspitman wrote: post #133

For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will e…

Syncthing is a great piece of software. I configured it on three of my machines in March and I've had zero issues since. In fact, it has worked so well that I don't even think about it. One of the machines even runs an old version found in Debian stable repos, but there has been no issues syncing with machines running newer versions. Only downside for me is that there's no iOS client.

Is Syncthing here to stay or will it morph into a nextcloud or a btsync or that ubuntu thing or be abandonner in 6 months ?

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

#399

Post by unhammer »

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.

Though unfortunately if you want to dual-boot, you have to manually set up the encryption :/ As in https://askubuntu.com/a/293029/25639 – I do wish the installer could do that instead of asking dual-booters to compromise.

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

#400

Post by anderspitman »

mijowi wrote: post #395
anderspitman wrote: post #133

For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will e…

If you just want to get a file or files from A to B you can use rsync. It works great (although I don't know if it works on Windows)

rsync is a great tool, but I'm talking about cases involving NATs and smartphones (although I'm sure there's a reasonable android version of rsync available).
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