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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

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Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#191

Post by gcr »

webwanderings wrote: post #88

This isn't a Dropbox alternative by any means. From what I could understand, you need to keep two of your machines ON in order to sync. The best it could be called is replacement of your USB drive. AeroFS does something similar and it apparently doesn't require keeping two of your machines On at the same time, though it didn't work for me as advertised, so I gave up on AeroFS. Using Dropbox in the title with this, is…

This was meant to address a specific use case that Dropbox does not.

I don't want a central service like Dropbox to host my files.

This design decision means that I must keep one or two of my machines on for my files to be available.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#192

Post by sirclueless »

pessimizer wrote: post #145
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox's core offering boils down to file sync + cloud sync. There's many use cases where that's what you want - access on whatever devices you have the app installed on, and also over the web. Cloud sync leads to storage limits (which don't make sense as a consumer for file sync, but are necessary for large scale cloud sync) and centralisation (desirable for vast access, not so much for some situations). BT sync is…

Is there anyone interested in cloud sync for its own sake? In other words, if the entire thing works seamlessly and identically in-house, and assuming a disciplined backup strategy, is there anybody going "But if it were in someone else's data center, that'd be so much better!" BT sync sounds like a complete replacement for dropbox for people with the skills and willingness to set it up.

I have taken advantage of Dropbox's cloud sync features quite often. For example, my school's printers are attached to library computers but not my laptop. So I can just log in to Dropbox from a library computer to download and print a file from their web interface. The only real alternative would be to first send myself an email with the file as an attachment, which would require me to have the forethought to send that email from my laptop first, instead of knowing I can print any file I want whenever I want.

Also, I often share individual files by using the "Get a public link" feature in Dropbox, and it's comforting to know they can just access those files whenever they want no matter what devices are attached and syncing.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#193

Post by aninhumer »

nessus42 wrote: post #176
k2enemy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security. I have a use case that is pretty common among my peer group and BT Sync has been the best solution I've been able to find. In a nutshell, I need to…

For the reasons that you've specified and others, I rolled my own very simple sync system based on Git. The biggest problem I personally have with Dropbbox et. al, is that none of the commercial solutions sync symbolic links opaquely . ("Opaque" syncing of symlinks means to sync the links themselves and not what the symlinks link to.) I use symlinks heavily and so I absolutely require this feature. Most of the commer…

What does Dropbox do in the case of a symlink circular reference?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#194

Post by megamark16 »

stephengillie wrote: post #123

So this will run on RasPi? It seems like the next step is for someone to attach a NAS to a RasPi and make a "syncbox" -- a NAS which auto-syncs to the other NASes you've configured across the internet. For end users, they would get 2 and share a secret between them, then install one at 2 separate offices (or home and office), and any files dumped onto one NAS are replicated to the other. Basically Dropbox without fil…

I have a Raspberry Pi setup as a NAS and media server (see http://www.naspberrypi.com/) and the first thing I did was download the Linux x64 version for my laptop and the ARM version for my NAS and I had them syncing in about 5 minutes. This is awesome. I'm going to ship another NASpberry Pi (along with an external hard drive that's already a clone of my existing backup drive) to my brother who lives on the other side of the country and completely replace my $100/year backup service with this.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#195

Post by Terretta »

tsycho wrote: post #179
Terretta wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. Why is this a problem with Flickr? I am generally shooting high res full frame, and post to Flickr. I have about a terabyte of images. There's no 100GB storage limit, just an annual flat fee. Family can download full resolution images for printing. My grandmother can have my Flickr Photo Stream as a screen…

I am using Everpix at the moment, but Flickr seems like a better deal and has much more features. Except for a critical one....auto-uploading from pre-specified folders & Photo Stream. Do you manually upload all your photos, or is there a better way?

You can auto load with a number of third party tools. Early on, I had a Perl uploader that would space things out during the day to keep a steady stream of new files posting. That shot me into Explore top 500 frequently. These days I like FlickStacker on iOS and FlickrExport on OSX. I just post sets when I'm done with triage.

http://ipont.jubilo.ca/ip/flickstackr/

http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/

I like Everpix too, fun to see what it comes up with for its "moments". Cool idea.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#196

Post by 6d0debc071 »

gph wrote: post #159
niels_olson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a political activist ... Bt sync is an excellent solution. I think it will need more cute cats before you can make that call. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_acti...

Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic. If they gained access to the sync group with full permissions they could destroy it and get IP addresses, etc. And the format itself might not lend itself to all the needs of a political activ…

It would look like any other encrypted information, but I'm unsure that the traffic patterns themselves wouldn't be distinctive.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#197

Post by mattty »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

Clicked your dropbox link, thought "those look familiar", check back, it's velocio!

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#198

Post by veidr »

nessus42 wrote: post #176
k2enemy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security. I have a use case that is pretty common among my peer group and BT Sync has been the best solution I've been able to find. In a nutshell, I need to…

For the reasons that you've specified and others, I rolled my own very simple sync system based on Git. The biggest problem I personally have with Dropbbox et. al, is that none of the commercial solutions sync symbolic links opaquely . ("Opaque" syncing of symlinks means to sync the links themselves and not what the symlinks link to.) I use symlinks heavily and so I absolutely require this feature. Most of the commer…

You are right: Dropbox's behavior with regard to symlinks is fundamentally wrong.

It is kinda lame that other services, e.g. Google Drive, just skip symlinks, but that isn't as dangerous. The hierarchical structure of a directory tree is often effectively part of an application's data, and Dropbox silently corrupts that data. This can cause crashes, or multiple conflicting copies of not-easily-merged data to be strewn about in different places.

It's also hard to initially notice how broken it is, since symlinks work on the first machine where Dropbox encounters them, but then on all subsequent client devices that Dropbox sees are replaced with some version of whatever data they point to.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#199

Post by nessus42 »

veidr wrote: post #198
nessus42 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the reasons that you've specified and others, I rolled my own very simple sync system based on Git. The biggest problem I personally have with Dropbbox et. al, is that none of the commercial solutions sync symbolic links opaquely . ("Opaque" syncing of symlinks means to sync the links themselves and not what the symlinks link to.) I use symlinks heavily and so I absolutely require this feature. Most of the commer…

You are right: Dropbox's behavior with regard to symlinks is fundamentally wrong . It is kinda lame that other services, e.g. Google Drive, just skip symlinks, but that isn't as dangerous. The hierarchical structure of a directory tree is often effectively part of an application's data, and Dropbox silently corrupts that data. This can cause crashes, or multiple conflicting copies of not-easily-merged data to be stre…

> You are right: Dropbox's behavior with regard to symlinks is fundamentally wrong.

What's even worse, is that no matter how hard I try, I am not able to convince most people of how wrong this is--even those who claim to be and should be computer savy. E.g., on support forums for other sync services, users are typically clamoring for Dropbox-style syncing of symlinks, and they will not be convinced otherwise, in spite of all reason. And despite 30 years of hard-earned experience with symlinks that irrefutably demonstrates that transparent syncing of symlinks is nothing but badness.

But thank goodness that BitTorrent got it right!

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