From rrnewton at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 09:56:39 2009 From: rrnewton at gmail.com (Ryan Newton) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 09:56:39 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? Message-ID: Hi Unisoners, Ben Pierce said that unison was intended as a stopgap while we wait for sufficiently good distributed file systems to come around, as of September 2009 he said he was "still waiting". I have to admit that I've been using unison for many years, and am a bit in love with it and with the complicated configurations I've set up. However, I also notice that some systems (notably DropBox) have been getting quite good recently. And they certainly excel in the UI area and in low-configuration requirements (unison weak points IMHO). Anyhow, I'm thinking about how I can use dropbox for the "hottest" 2gb of my data (that's the free account size), while using unison to back up everything else. Unfortunately, in general, my history with using multiple synchronization systems in concert has been painful (e.g. when I unison SVN working copies...). Best, -Ryan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/unison-hackers/attachments/20091005/a70ed3c3/attachment-0001.htm From bcpierce at cis.upenn.edu Mon Oct 5 10:02:38 2009 From: bcpierce at cis.upenn.edu (Benjamin Pierce) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 10:02:38 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> I've been hearing some good things about DropBox too. I'd love to know more about people's experiences with it, especially compared to Unison. Two things Unison is pretty good at are (1) failing safely when things go wrong and (2) getting the details of cross-platform synchronization right. I doubt if I'll personally want switch to anything that doesn't do at least as good a job on both counts, so comments on these aspects of DropBox would be particularly interesting. - Benjamin On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:56 AM, Ryan Newton wrote: > Hi Unisoners, > > Ben Pierce said that unison was intended as a stopgap while we wait > for sufficiently good distributed file systems to come around, as of > September 2009 he said he was "still waiting". > > I have to admit that I've been using unison for many years, and am a > bit in love with it and with the complicated configurations I've set > up. However, I also notice that some systems (notably DropBox) have > been getting quite good recently. And they certainly excel in the > UI area and in low-configuration requirements (unison weak points > IMHO). > > Anyhow, I'm thinking about how I can use dropbox for the "hottest" > 2gb of my data (that's the free account size), while using unison to > back up everything else. Unfortunately, in general, my history with > using multiple synchronization systems in concert has been painful > (e.g. when I unison SVN working copies...). > > Best, > -Ryan > > _______________________________________________ > Unison-hackers mailing list > Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu > http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers From koendeproft at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 10:32:49 2009 From: koendeproft at gmail.com (koendeproft@gmail.com) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:32:49 +0200 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> References: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <601b345e0910050732s5545a654lbdfaaad8827201f1@mail.gmail.com> I've done a very quick unicode filename test on Dropbox when synchronizing from Mac to PC and back, just to know if they actually supported unicode filenames. It passed the test without any problem. Can't say much about the reliability. Last year I read on their forums that synchronizing a large set of files was problematic, but I don't know how far they've come since then. -Koen On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Benjamin Pierce wrote: > I've been hearing some good things about DropBox too. ?I'd love to > know more about people's experiences with it, especially compared to > Unison. > > Two things Unison is pretty good at are (1) failing safely when things > go wrong and (2) getting the details of cross-platform synchronization > right. ?I doubt if I'll personally want switch to anything that > doesn't do at least as good a job on both counts, so comments on these > aspects of DropBox would be particularly interesting. > > ? ?- Benjamin > > > On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:56 AM, Ryan Newton wrote: > >> Hi Unisoners, >> >> Ben Pierce said that unison was intended as a stopgap while we wait >> for sufficiently good distributed file systems to come around, as of >> September 2009 he said he was "still waiting". >> >> I have to admit that I've been using unison for many years, and am a >> bit in love with it and with the complicated configurations I've set >> up. ?However, I also notice that some systems (notably DropBox) have >> been getting quite good recently. ?And they certainly excel in the >> UI area and in low-configuration requirements (unison weak points >> IMHO). >> >> Anyhow, I'm thinking about how I can use dropbox for the "hottest" >> 2gb of my data (that's the free account size), while using unison to >> back up everything else. ?Unfortunately, in general, my history with >> using multiple synchronization systems in concert has been painful >> (e.g. when I unison SVN working copies...). >> >> Best, >> -Ryan >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Unison-hackers mailing list >> Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu >> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers > > _______________________________________________ > Unison-hackers mailing list > Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu > http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers > From bostonvaulter at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 02:59:42 2009 From: bostonvaulter at gmail.com (Jason Axelson) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 20:59:42 -1000 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> References: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <21810b630910052359t7116e717pea2ab5cab21d384f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 4:02 AM, Benjamin Pierce wrote: > I've been hearing some good things about DropBox too. ?I'd love to > know more about people's experiences with it, especially compared to > Unison. > > Two things Unison is pretty good at are (1) failing safely when things > go wrong and (2) getting the details of cross-platform synchronization > right. ?I doubt if I'll personally want switch to anything that > doesn't do at least as good a job on both counts, so comments on these > aspects of DropBox would be particularly interesting. I've been using unison for a few months to synchronize files that I work with daily (homework and such), I've been using it only on Linux so far. It is currently about 150MB of data so I can't say anything about large datasets (I am using unison for 4GB of longer-term data). It works very well for what I use it for. I save a file while working and see it upload it to the server within seconds with a nice safe reassuring green checkmark on the systray. Also when you start it up it tells you how many files were synchronized. In the error handling department, I am not sure what it does if you make two separate changes to documents while offline. But if you have an error like a file that is owned by root it'll just continually try to transfer it so you have to check what the problem is and it will tell you. Installation and setup was drop-dead simple. Part of the reason for this is because it forces a (mostly) centralized server model on you (I believe it does some checking for LAN dropbox clients to speed up synchronization). Of course thing brings me to my main complaint with dropbox, the data is stored on their own server which means I have less control over it and have a storage limit. I would really like to see unison become more like dropbox by synchronizing in real time rather than batch jobs as it currently does and I think Benjamin said recently that this wouldn't be *too* much work to accomplish. Jason From christoph.thielecke at gmx.de Tue Oct 6 03:12:30 2009 From: christoph.thielecke at gmx.de (Christoph Thielecke) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 09:12:30 +0200 Subject: [Unison-hackers] localalizion? Message-ID: <200910060912.34641.christoph.thielecke@gmx.de> Hello, whats about localizion of unison? Is it now possible? If there is an translation template, I can do the German translation. Best regards Christoph -- Linux User Group Wernigerode http://www.lug-wr.de/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/unison-hackers/attachments/20091006/b0e0fea5/attachment.sig From sylvain at le-gall.net Tue Oct 6 03:57:25 2009 From: sylvain at le-gall.net (Sylvain Le Gall) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:57:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Unison-hackers] localalizion? References: <200910060912.34641.christoph.thielecke@gmx.de> Message-ID: On 06-10-2009, Christoph Thielecke wrote: > > whats about localizion of unison? Is it now possible? If there is an=20 > translation template, I can do the German translation. I am working on a gettext-enabled version of unison. It is not yet ready, because I need to fix bugs in ocaml-gettext and find every translatable item in unison. Hope this will be ready soon. Regards Sylvain Le Gall From alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org Tue Oct 6 04:28:47 2009 From: alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org (Alan Schmitt) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:28:47 +0200 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: <21810b630910052359t7116e717pea2ab5cab21d384f@mail.gmail.com> References: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> <21810b630910052359t7116e717pea2ab5cab21d384f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <25ec8ca60910060128m5655c8d4k91a42d6ed6bb065c@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Jason Axelson wrote: > In the error handling department, I am not sure what it does if you > make two separate changes to documents while offline. It leaves you with two files, changing the file name of one of them. I use dropbox for files I want to have available online and on my iPhone, and I've found that it works great for that. Alan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/unison-hackers/attachments/20091006/9e24fe08/attachment.htm From newton at mit.edu Tue Oct 6 10:32:23 2009 From: newton at mit.edu (Ryan Newton) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:32:23 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: <25ec8ca60910060128m5655c8d4k91a42d6ed6bb065c@mail.gmail.com> References: <36D8F305-F897-4E70-9B58-BE71CD28C141@cis.upenn.edu> <21810b630910052359t7116e717pea2ab5cab21d384f@mail.gmail.com> <25ec8ca60910060128m5655c8d4k91a42d6ed6bb065c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Yes, I think dropbox's UI methodology -- the green check-box tags on items that are synced, the renamed files for conflicts -- is very accessible. Also running as a daemon is very nice -- allow bandwidth caps like a bittorrent client, run whenever and don't think about it. But I don't yet have enough experience to respond to Ben's questions re: failing safely and cross platform. I will say that the first time I tried dropbox (six months ago) when I stress tested the Mac OS client it got confused and failed to upload files that were present, and then start indexing a bunch of files which it shouldn't. Still hasn't managed to flagrantly delete or corrupt data like so many other synchronization products. I won't hold too much of a grudge that the client OS integration was buggy (presumably they're focused on windows). And I haven't ran into any problems yet with the version I downloaded recently (0.6.567). -Ryan On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Alan Schmitt wrote: > On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Jason Axelson wrote: > >> In the error handling department, I am not sure what it does if you >> make two separate changes to documents while offline. > > > It leaves you with two files, changing the file name of one of them. > > I use dropbox for files I want to have available online and on my iPhone, > and I've found that it works great for that. > > Alan > > _______________________________________________ > Unison-hackers mailing list > Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu > http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/unison-hackers/attachments/20091006/7abbdacb/attachment-0001.htm From andrex at alumni.utexas.net Tue Oct 6 14:18:23 2009 From: andrex at alumni.utexas.net (Andrew Schulman) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:18:23 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? References: Message-ID: Without trying out the software, but just looking around their web site, I notice a couple of things right away: * You have to run their closed-source daemon on each of your hosts. * You store files on their servers and have to trust that they'll be safe there. I'm not inclined to be paranoid, but I'm allergic to both of these requirements-- neither of which Unison suffers from. Andrew. From newton at mit.edu Tue Oct 6 14:47:57 2009 From: newton at mit.edu (Ryan Newton) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:47:57 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: * You have to run their closed-source daemon on each of your hosts. * You store files on their servers and have to trust that they'll be safe there. Well, actually, as compared to cloud services like Google Docs, etc, I don't think the second point is really a problem. The great thing about synchronization tools like both unison and dropbox (as opposed to AFS/NFS/etc) is that all your machines have a local copy. So it's fine if the company disappears tomorrow. Actually, I see the server side storage as an added bonus. Pure client-client synchronization with unison requires that one personally be responsible for unisoning their content to geographically diverse locations for safe archival. A big burden. For many years I have been continually setting up such configurations (with friends and family) and having them quickly rot. But if you meant "safe" in the "not revealed to others" rather than "not deleted" sense, you're absolutely right. Though hopefully in the future these cloud services will encrypt everything and not know what they're storing.... -Ryan On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Andrew Schulman wrote: > Without trying out the software, but just looking around their web site, I > notice a couple of things right away: > > * You have to run their closed-source daemon on each of your hosts. > * You store files on their servers and have to trust that they'll be safe > there. > I'm not inclined to be paranoid, but I'm allergic to both of these > requirements-- neither of which Unison suffers from. > > Andrew. > > _______________________________________________ > Unison-hackers mailing list > Unison-hackers at lists.seas.upenn.edu > http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/unison-hackers > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/unison-hackers/attachments/20091006/5dc6b6db/attachment.htm From andrex at alumni.utexas.net Tue Oct 6 15:12:44 2009 From: andrex at alumni.utexas.net (Andrew Schulman) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:12:44 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] How do people feel about DropBox? References: Message-ID: > * You have to run their closed-source daemon on each of your hosts. > * You store files on their servers and have to trust that they'll be safe > there. > > Well, actually, as compared to cloud services like Google Docs, etc, I don't > think the second point is really a problem. I guess it depends on what you're synchronizing. I use Unison (over ssh) to synchronize all of my personal and work files between two secure locations. I wouldn't trust any cloud service with those files. > Actually, I see the server side storage as an added bonus. Pure > client-client synchronization with unison requires that one personally be > responsible for unisoning their content to geographically diverse locations > for safe archival. A big burden. Agreed that cloud storage gives you extra security against disaster. I see also that DropBox includes 30 days of history in the free version, which is nice extra protection against accidental deletion. I can see that that's an appealing and easy-to-use combination for a lot of people. For me, it doesn't provide any benefit because nightly backups and version control of critical files already protect me against accidental deletions. As for geographical diversity, I synchronize my files between home and work, which I'll bet is the most common way people use Unison. Those locations are 11 miles apart, so if an asteroid or earthquake hits I may lose my files, but short of that I'll still have them. Andrew. From jwalkowski at sjnma.org Wed Oct 7 23:47:37 2009 From: jwalkowski at sjnma.org (Joseph Walkowski) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 23:47:37 -0400 Subject: [Unison-hackers] Joseph Walkowski has invited you to use Google Talk Message-ID: <29716787.66731561254973649575.chat@gmail.com> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph Walkowski has invited you to sign up for Google Talk so you can talk to each other for free over your computers. To sign-up, go to: http://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=talk&sendvemail=true&skipvpage=true&reqemail=unison-hackers%40lists.seas.upenn.edu&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Ftalk%2Fservice%2Fhandleinvite%3Fp%3Dpoq-ASYBAAA.GvFM85AFWWXaDM65oDL2tfndkor39fQG9vub8qx66mloUjHL2d7HhOxj8cbenjK3_PJ6Wx1jjAZjIJIcSVRDww.bJrMpxT81DlYwVtbc4vg6A&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Ftalk%2Fservice%2FHandleEmailVerified%3Fee%3Dpoq-ASYBAAA.Sf2Jem1bDdD7PTU8eYALYfJnV66Cki62p14a3U5xsAvJ-x8SVdW5chxg5GcIqQ94.sHrKjKWN017hrKzOwYc_vQ%26p%3Dpoq-ASYBAAA.GvFM85AFWWXaDM65oDL2tfndkor39fQG9vub8qx66mloUjHL2d7HhOxj8cbenjK3_PJ6Wx1jjAZjIJIcSVRDww.bJrMpxT81DlYwVtbc4vg6A Google Talk is a downloadable Windows* application that offers: - Free calls over your computer anytime, from anywhere, and for as long as you want - A simple and intuitive user interface for sending instant messages or making calls--no clutter, pop-ups or ads - Superior voice quality through just a microphone and computer speaker - Fast file transfers with no restrictions on file type After signing-up, download Google Talk and sign in with your new Google Account username and password. You can then begin inviting anyone you want to talk to for free. Google Talk works with any computer speaker and microphone, such as the ones built-in to many PC laptops today, as well as with wired and wireless headsets and USB phones. Google Talk also works across all firewalls. Google Talk is still in beta. Just like with Gmail, we're working hard to add features and make improvements, so we might also ask for your comments and suggestions periodically. We appreciate your help in making it even better! Thanks, The Google Talk Team To learn more about Google Talk before signing up, visit: http://www.google.com/talk/about.html (If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser). * Not a Windows user? No problem. You can also connect to the Google Talk service from any platform using third-party clients (http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html).