You are not logged in.

#1 2014-12-06 03:48:55

ShadowKyogre
Member
From: Hell! XP No... I'm not telling
Registered: 2008-12-19
Posts: 476
Website

[SOLVED] Self-hosted file syncing options?

Relevant previous threads and/or posts:
* https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=172887
* https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1478523

I think this is where this would go (other likely sections include "Applications & Desktop Environments" and "Networking, Server, and Protection"), but if this is the wrong section, please move it.

What would you suggest as alternatives to Google Drive/Docs and Dropbox? Currently, I have Copy.com as my alternative to Dropbox, but there are a few problems I'm having with it. Right now, I'm currently considering either OwnCloud or Seafile to replace both Google Drive and Copy.com, but I'm not sure which one to pick. Alternatively, I'm also considering git-annex or pure git repos.

For the things I'm considering:

  • OwnCloud: Has the upside of being able to edit *.odt files inline, //but//, its editor for *.odt formatting's still pretty basic. Not to mention there's these two egregious bugs that I hope get fixed soon. Also has cross-platform clients. I currently have this on my server, but I haven't fully configured it yet after noticing those.

  • Seafile: Also has collaborative editing, but it's limited to markdown (which I don't mind, but it'd require me to edit the code a little bit to support the formatting I usually use with my markdown files) and *.seaf (its special rich text file format). The amount of formatting options for the rich text format is enough for me and whoever else'd be scribbling on it. Also has cross-platform clients.

  • git-annex: SImply because git. And non-redundant copies for the things it revisions. I wouldn't mind losing the collaborative editing, but, I won't be able to use this with my Windows laptop. I think I might be able to use this with my phone too, but I'm not sure.

  • An... rsync server?: The rsync protocol is ideal for this, but I haven't done enough in depth research to make sure this is right for me. I'll be sure to edit the OP after I finish doing this.

Things I've tried before:

  • Dropbox: Nothing wrong with it functionality wise, but Drop Dropbox has information on why I'm not using it. (and this would've worked fantastically with webodt to provide a preview to my friends of the files I have without forcing them to download it)

  • Google Drive/Docs: Absolutely fantastic for collaborating with other people and quickly sharing, but storing files into multiple parent folders creates a LOT of redundant copies in the export when I want to take regular backups of my Google Drive contents. Not to mention the Google Drive API for retrieving the revisions is extremely unreliable compared to how they show the revisions in the Doc editor GUI (which is flawless).

  • Copy.com: Nothing wrong with it functionality wise... except for their CLI client. It's kind of buggy and I use it to get public links for my files since I don't have Nautilus or Caja. I'm hoping that they get to fixing the bug for regexes in their commandline app or at least put some in-depth documentation about the limitations of the wildcards, but I have little hope for this judging by how they handled my support tickets. I also tried using webodt to serve up previews to my friends, but the sanitized HTML output prevents this.

Things that I usually sync or collab on, which maybe of note when suggesting alternatives (that either replace and/or complement) to what I've tried and what I'm considering:

  • Lots of plain text files from Gimp configs, notes, chat logs, etc.

  • Lots of images since I use it to sync wallpapers, silly pictures, etc.

  • *.odt files since I usually keep my stories in that format so I can edit them wherever whenever

[EDIT]: Forgot to mention that the minimum requirement for collabing and/or sharing things is to provide a public link that can be referred to in a bare html page that uses webodf.js (<- which I have made before) so I can show it to my non-tech savvy friends. Or similarly, I could construct an on-the-fly bare html page that presents the HTML for the markdown for the other shared files since not a lot of them know what markdown looks like. (Or just regularly render the markdown/odt files to html and show the link to that, though that makes storage on my end redundant)

Example: http://example.url show just a blank page

http://example.url?show=http://other.url will show a rendered preview of the file referred to in that url.

[EDIT]: Also forgot to mention that for public file linking, I'm thinking of transfer.sh for now to temporarily share copies of stories to people who don't have SyncThing or similar syncing clients installed. The last bit to figure out is how I'm going to quickly share a batch of images without having to manually re-upload them on another host. Heartbeat also looks interesting, but will have to wait four more days before testing it.

[EDIT]: SyncThing+https://ptpb.pw/ is my settled on solution for now.

Last edited by ShadowKyogre (2015-01-06 17:23:28)


For every problem, there is a solution that is:
Clean
Simple and most of all...wrong!
Github page

Offline

#2 2014-12-06 03:56:59

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Self-hosted file syncing options?

You seem to want more than just file syncing (for which I would recommend Syncthing: FOSS and works brilliantly), like the ability to share files or collaborate...


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

Offline

#3 2014-12-06 04:07:48

ShadowKyogre
Member
From: Hell! XP No... I'm not telling
Registered: 2008-12-19
Posts: 476
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Self-hosted file syncing options?

jasonwryan wrote:

You seem to want more than just file syncing (for which I would recommend Syncthing: FOSS and works brilliantly), like the ability to share files or collaborate...

Sort of ^^;. I should've mentioned that the minimum requirement for collabing and/or sharing things is to provide a public link that can be referred to in a bare html page that uses webodf.js (<- which I have made before) so I can show it to my non-tech savvy friends (or similarly, I could construct an on-the-fly bare html page that presents the HTML for the markdown for the other shared files since not a lot of them know what markdown looks like).

Example: http://example.url show just a blank page

http://example.url?show=http://other.url will show a rendered preview of the file referred to in that url.

I'll edit the OP to mention that.

As for SyncThing, I haven't tried it out yet (mostly because I haven't heard of it), but I'll go read the docs right now to see how to set that up.


For every problem, there is a solution that is:
Clean
Simple and most of all...wrong!
Github page

Offline

#4 2014-12-06 04:13:39

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Self-hosted file syncing options?

Offline

#5 2014-12-06 07:06:30

ShadowKyogre
Member
From: Hell! XP No... I'm not telling
Registered: 2008-12-19
Posts: 476
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Self-hosted file syncing options?

Just came back from setting it up on my desktop and servier. Wow, setting it up is this easy? //And// I can have different versioning schemes for the folders I sync? Sweet! (Not to mention there's also a pluggable API for versioning, I may wanna toy with that during winter break)

I just put my WallPapers folder inside the Sync folder to test how well it handles big data, which is swimmingly (and can partly be attributed that I told the server and the desktop their IPs like in jason's blog).

I'll start syncing the rest of my things into SyncThing, then figure out how I'm going to get around the public link showing for friends and reviewers.

[EDIT]: Just got this also installed on my phone (with a custom .stignore file) and on my laptop. Both are syncing well with the current node configuration. Now just to figure out how to show random public links without the other person having to have syncthing too.

[EDIT]: Since a few days after posting this, there's also the option of https://ptpb.pw/ for the public linking that can be reused to provide a consistent, random public link for each file/batch of files. Because of this, I'm marking the first post as [SOLVED].

Last edited by ShadowKyogre (2015-01-06 17:22:42)


For every problem, there is a solution that is:
Clean
Simple and most of all...wrong!
Github page

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB