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Ifolder Server Review
liquidat writes "I wanted to have a look at the new Open Source ifolder-server and additionally at ifolder in general. ifolder is mainly supported by Novell, and Novell advertises it's Suse Linux, so I downloaded a Suse-VMware image, installed the vmware player and gave it a try. After I installed the needed software it worked pretty well and gave me a quite good impression of what ifolder is about."
#1 had 2 B done.
I haven't used iFolder (on Windows/Novell) since 2005 but that's because of horrible locking. We were using it to share a "log file" document for keeping track of what documents were mailed from our department across two campuses.
I was the main user of this document and would add 50 to 60 entries at any one time. iFolder wouldn't let me know that someone else had the file open and if I would save it with the other person's version open, I risked losing my work (which happened twice before I scrapped the idea and moved to another solution which included using a shared e-mail folder in Groupwise).
iFolder, at the time, was insecure, slow, and problematic. Hopefully with it going out to the community these issues will be resolved.
Did anyone else read that name as "If older"?
i am actually looking for file synchronisation solution for linux for some time now.
i would prefer somethnig that can sync in both ways (thus rsync does not cut this time), something that requires no special server and additional software on file server (so it is able to work with plain smb/nfs shares) - thus ifolder and svn solutions fail.
to increase possibility of results, i'd like to add that windows has built-in file synchronisation mechanism that is able to sync files to simple file share (from user interface it looks like 'offline files' or something similar).
is there anything comparable for linux ?
Rich
It would be nice if you gave a quick description of what exactly iFolder is. From reading the article posting, the first few paragraphs of your blog, and the link in the first paragraph of your blog, I know it's written in GTK# and that it's from Novell, but I still have no idea what the hell it is and now I don't care anymore.
To the editors, please reject stories that don't describe what new products (or not commonly known products) are so that people can have some clue right away whether or not they want to bother reading the story.
I don't know if I want to read this because I don't know what ifolder is and I obviously can't figure it out without reading a lot more of the article than I want.
gave me a quite good impression of what ifolder is about."
neither in the blurb, nor the article, do you actually state what ifolder is or isn't.
Don't we already have enough GUI based file tools? What does this 'truly' add? I didn't see true value described..please help me.
How is this different/better from running an FTP (or SCP or SFTP) server?
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I've looked at iFolder and sort of understand its use, my query is, how do I install it on FreeBSD, which is my server. I want to have all my documents on the server shared on my home network via iFolder to all clients, since we're moving more and more to laptops. How does this work, and what are the advantages of this over something like NFS?
;))
I need this to work with Linux, OS X and XP clients (my wife needs XP for online classes, thus that support option
fak3r.com
One draw back though, would be for those still using dialup. They would cry foul! Heck, such a movie could be uploaded to Google Video for free. With this route, the problem is that the video would have to go through some form of editorial process. The advantage in the end would be very much worth the effort.
v3 of iFolder definitely takes it to the next level with the ability to share iFolders with others and the ability to have multiple iFolders. I've got the rpms on hand and am setting up a Virtual Server to give it a whirl here myself.
Remember - v3 of the server JUST got released as open source. They've been banging on it VERY hard so I don't expect it to be flawless. But its a very exciting product.
As for the windows locking issues - unless that's something the commentor saw in v3 - we had a lot of iFolder users and never saw locking problems, even from users with laptops and desktops who had iFolder active at the same time. That's one of the appeals for computer geeks with more than one computer - true sync of files between all platforms and the server. If you can afford the space usage, its nice to know that even if the network is down, each unit will have that file you need.
I hope iFolder draws a following - its a sweet product.
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Basically, what iFolder allows you to do is keep synchronized copies of data in multiple places. For instance, if I have a folder on my desktop, and a file in the folder named Bob.txt, Bob.txt will be stored not only on my local machine, but also updated to the iFolder server, as well as any other machine I have running the iFolder client with my Login.
So, the result is that I can work on a file when at work, and know that when I get home the synchronized copy will be waiting for me there. If I don't have the iFolder client at home, there is a nice web interface where I can get the latest copy.
Now, the really nice piece is that the file is synchronized on a block level, which means only the delta changes will be synchronized. This allows large files to quickly be synched across rather small pipes.
Just an iFolder? With .Mac you get an entire iDisk.
and I still don't really know what ifolder is. From what I read, it is a folder that I can access using a special client or a web interface. There is tons of software that does something along this line, from basic FTP / Apache folder view, to NFS or Coda to all the various HTTP webdrop applications.
A more usefull article would explain how it compares to other common software, not necisarily to declare a w1nnAr but to let me know what what situations it excels in, and if it would be usefull to me.
Why not tell us?
Criminy. I'm sick of having to read the comments in every single story because the story summary doesn't give you any useful information.
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What exactly am I comparing myself to? I'm one of the oldest servers in this restaurant, but that's just because I haven't finished my dissertaion yet. If older than who? And what am I supposed to review?
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Then the reviews would show up on my machine as a blank box with a message reading "click to install plugin". I'd click, and it would say "no compatible plugins found". The problem with Flash is that it's proprietary, not open. HTML is a standard. The one can't substitute for the other. Get Macromedia to open-source Flash, then we'll talk.
According to this document, "Starting with 1.3, Linux now supports two types of file locks. One is flock locking, where a process can request to lock the entire file, and the other is POSIX locking, where it can lock specific regions of a file.
More interestingly is a quote (apparently a comment from the kernel source):What's changed since 1995, if anything, I wonder?
At any rate, the majority of UNIX machines these days aren't used for direct shell access, but probably run filesharing protocols like CIFS/Samba or AFP/netatalk, which have their own file-locking systems on the exported volumes. (I'm not sure whether they use the Linux advisory locking to accomplish this. I also wonder what happens if you have the same volume exported by both Samba and netatalk in regards to locking when both a Samba user and a netatalk user try to modify something.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
iFolder sounded like a perfect product for me and my business. It goal: to transparently integrate a network file system into desktop experience. Where you can store, backup, share, access file from any location that is networked is awesome. The transfer are encrypted and there is a full featured easy to use web admin portion. It would be awesome for simple collaborative file exchange activities,
.NET framework it require you to setup nant. My god, I've been using linux for 10+ years now on a daily basis but this was completely painful.
However, do not even try to install this product on fedora core (It might be easier on fedora core 5 because on the mono integration, I don't) or rhel or any derivative. The dependencies need are just insane. The first being mono which is way enough to install. The pain start when you need to install log4net (which no rpm i found exists). Since it is built in
SUSE must be taking a page from the Apple notebook. Build a great product and use it to push your OS. Which is fine, using virtualization does solve this issue since you can just create a slice of SUSE.
OK, not completely, but it's way behind where it could be, and a great deal of that is the kind of mentality that both publishes and publicizes articles like this one.
/. to tell the worls what your cool project does. DO NOT depend on word of mouth. DO NOT depend on google or usenet or anything else. Put the stupid desccription right up front.
First off, the article doesn't tell you what the heck ifolder is. 99% of those who could use knowledge about ifolder won't read the article because after 1 or 2 paragraphs, they still have no clue what it is. Most would still have to guess after reading the whole thing.
But worse, while the article does point to the ifolder pages, the main page there doesn't tell you anything useful. Either include a short description or make the big, unmissable link a "What it is" button.
DO NOT depend on
Yes, there are a lot of big bucks product pages that are just as brain-edad. If they have the market share, or ar ethe only game in town, they'll survive. But they'd do even better if they followed this rule.
But for most of you, your open source project is NOT the 500 pound gorilla. It's not even the 1 ounce mouse baby, even if it could be the 500 pound gorilla. Why make life more difficyult for the end user? That is NOT the way to market share. Open, closed, free, expensive, doesn't matter. Tell people what the heck it is they can get, even if it's free.
I took a look at iFolder some time ago, mainly through my interest in mono. Anyone out there who has used iFolder and FolderShare care to post a quick comparison?
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
We used iFolder 2 in a Novell cluster and it was a really nice product. Our laptop users loved it. None of the hassles of Windows offline folders (which seems to try to use a sledgehammer to nail in a tack) iFolder simply sits in the background and watches your iFolder for changes/new files and seamlessly syncs them with the iFolder on the server.
If a file becomes dirty [i.e. if it's altered], then, traditionally, Windows copied THE ENTIRE FILE to the server.
So if you were goofing around with a 1MB PDF, say, and you saved some changes, then Windows would push the entire 1MB across the wire.
iFolder, on the other hand, pushed ONLY THE DIRTY SECTORS - if, for instance, your alterations were confined to a single 512 byte sector, then only that sector was pushed across the wire.
So, in effect, Windows was like encrypted FTP, whereas iFolder was more like an encrypted file system over TCP.
Traditionally the great drawback to iFolder was that its passwords and passkeys were not stored in NDS, so you had to remember a set of passwords and passkeys that were distinct from your NDS password, which put a real damper on things. Don't know whether they've cleaned that up in v3, but having to memorize a second set of credentials kinda obviated the whole purpose of turning to Novell in the first place.