121–130 of 158 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dropbox is always connected and continually checks for updates, just because one sees at the same time doesn't mean they are related. I see Dropbox connections all the time whenever I look through my network.
I am on mac, I have littlesnitch and I also have Geektool display network connections. Dropbox is not always "active". I don't see any kind of network traffic after syncing has been done under macosx.
In Windows, even with a filter limiting which directories to process, a FileSystemWatcher object has to examine each event and decide whether or not to call the event handler or let it pass without action. That means it would have to read the file information and compare it against the filters that have been defined. These actions will show up as at least 4 or 5 entries in Process Monitor (and maybe more, I'm not sur…
> FileSystemWatcher That's a .Net contraption over one of two Win32 APIs that provide file system monitoring services. Neither of these requires opening files in response to file system notifications. That's 100%, guaranteed. Correct me if I wrong but Dropbox is not written in .Net, so what you said is irrelevant. -- APIs in question: [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... [2] https://msd…
Either way, I'm fairly certain that checking file properties (as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies) would be registered as opening the file.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why it is scanning files outside of the agreed location?
Doesn't tallavor address this in the first sentence? > In Windows, even with a filter limiting which directories to process, a FileSystemWatcher object has to examine each event and decide whether or not to call the event handler or let it pass without action. Sounds like the very act of checking whether the file falls within the "agreed location" is what caught the author's attention. I can't say whether that's true…
"collect it all" But I wonder why we don't have application isolation as a basic design principle. Imagine an OS where applications/serices each get their own mini-filesystem, without ability to access each other's data. Would that work?
This would completely defeat the point of Dropbox, then; If your Word document is in your Word folder, how does it get to another computer? Do you give the app developer, Microsoft, exclusive right to 'sync' your files elsewhere? Sandboxing is a good idea. An old idea, actually; chroot was added to unix in 1979. But shared filesystems evolved and are the norm, and even if many apps could be sandboxed, Dropbox exists…
In Windows, even with a filter limiting which directories to process, a FileSystemWatcher object has to examine each event and decide whether or not to call the event handler or let it pass without action. That means it would have to read the file information and compare it against the filters that have been defined. These actions will show up as at least 4 or 5 entries in Process Monitor (and maybe more, I'm not sur…
Why it is scanning files outside of the agreed location?
Independently of whether DB reads/uploads all the files or not, I've arrived at a difficult position about Dropbox: I'm looking for alternatives. No, it's unrelated with politics or pricing; it's just that in many cases Dropbox sucks . Why? Well, I mostly don't care about all the new features (mobile, Carousel, etc.). What I care the most is that i) it syncs files and ii) acts as a quasi-backup. However, I see the sa…
Seafile is really easy to self-host nowadays, basically extract and run: http://manual.seafile.com/deploy/using_sqlite.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FileSystemWatcher That's a .Net contraption over one of two Win32 APIs that provide file system monitoring services. Neither of these requires opening files in response to file system notifications. That's 100%, guaranteed. Correct me if I wrong but Dropbox is not written in .Net, so what you said is irrelevant. -- APIs in question: [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... [2] https://msd…
I'm not sure if Dropbox is managed code or not. FileSystemWatcher does implement ReadDirectoryChangesW, which would allow them to set specific directories to watch. They may be using change journals instead, though, which function differently. Either way, I'm fairly certain that checking file properties (as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies) would be registered as opening the file.
> I'm fairly certain that checking file properties (as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies) would be registered as opening the file.
Bzzt, nope. Wrong again. You should really try and not comment on things that you are not well-versed at. This part in particular - "as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies" - makes no sense. Dropbox has the file path readily available from the notification itself [1], and that's the only thing they need to look at to determine if the file is in their managed directory or not.
[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...
Point being that the app does not need to open files when processing file system notifications, which is what you stated in the top comment.
Independently of whether DB reads/uploads all the files or not, I've arrived at a difficult position about Dropbox: I'm looking for alternatives. No, it's unrelated with politics or pricing; it's just that in many cases Dropbox sucks . Why? Well, I mostly don't care about all the new features (mobile, Carousel, etc.). What I care the most is that i) it syncs files and ii) acts as a quasi-backup. However, I see the sa…
Are you sure this is still the case? How exactly do you reproduce this with Dropbox for Windows?
I tried copying and pasting a file, as well as creating a new file, and the case is preserved.
No, Dropbox is not stealing your stuff. Apparently people have never heard of Windows Shell Extensions, the approved non-hacky way to overlay icons over files.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...
The tortoise apps do the same thing to overlay Git/Hg/Svn icons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just some more information: Dropbox does not read the file outside the dropbox folder. It does, however, 'QueryBasicFileInformation' and and 'QueryDirectory' when I create a file on my desktop. I'm guessing this has to do with the explorer extension.
This is the first comment in this discussion I've seen that is actually interesting and might provide an explanation. The Dropbox file status symbols are a -big hack-. Up until OS X 10.10, for instance, the file browsing interface didn't provide per-file badging at the OS API level. So they literally had to patch the running Finder process to do this. I wouldn't be surprised to learn something similar is going on wit…