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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."
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.
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.
Try unison.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
wow. from the description it really looks like it's exactly what i want. ;) ...and it's even in suse packman repository. and it seems to work. :)
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ seems to be the offical homepage.
too bad there are no screenshots of gtk interface
thank you
Rich
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.
All syncing is done over normal SSL HTTP connections (at least in v2 it was)
So iFolder ensures you'll always have your files available, even if you have no network connection (on a plane, etc) and when you get that connection back, makes sure everything is synced.
Really cool use case? Executives with assistants. Executive is travelling - they have all their files locally and those files get 'backed up' to a server when they get connected. But if the assistant has updated a bunch of files as well, the executive will get those updates pushed to their laptop during the next background sync (say in a hotel)
Think an automated version of rsync over ssh. iFolder uses a totally different architecture and has a lot of management and sharing features, but at its simplest use, syncing two folders between a PC and a server, it accomplishes what rsync over ssh would.
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The benefit with iFolder over some of the other solutions on the market is that it runs across Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. And the files will synchronize to each of the different systems, regardless of the OS it was created on.
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.
I can second that. I've been using Unison to sync. my entire source directory (1000s of files) between home and work. Over at least 3 years of doing this and I've never lost a file.
Oh, yah, the best part...I've been doing this through a modem-to-modem connection running at something like 20kb (that's less than 1/2 regular dial-up speed) and I've never had to wait more than a few minutes to sync. up several 1000 files. (Unison only transfers files that have been changed, and only the *actual changed portions* of each changed file. Combine that with the fact that the program keeps directories on each end of the connection, so that there's very little time spent deciding which of those 1000s of files have been changed.)
Downsides: hmmm...If you're using Windows you need to install cygwin. I initially thought that was a royal pain-in-the-ass, but having got used to cygwin's bash shell now I love having it available. Also, (ok, my version is several years old -- since It Just Works, why update? -- so this may have changed) you need to get an cygwin SSH daemon running on the computer you're going to call in to, AKA your file server). It can also be kinda difficult to fine-tune the config. files that Unison uses to determine what directories/files to sync.
But, after you get everything running you never need to touch the thing again. Highly recommended.
I dunno if it's abandoned, but it doesn't matter. Unison is *mature* -- there just aren't any lurking bugs that will never be fixed, or "coming soon" features that you really need *now*.
So don't worry about not having new versions available, or that new patches aren't forthcoming. I've been using my copy for over three years now with *one* update (and that was just because I installed a newly-downloaded version on a new machine and the new version was incompatible with the older copy).
I'm trying to get it built for x86_64 and have run into a few snag which I've outlined here. Anyone with more x86_64 build smarts than I, by all means let me know.
So yes, the source RPMs are not perfect as I have found, but they are buildable (well, I'm still working on iFolder-Server itself - I'm close) Remember, this JUST got released open source. I expect it will be a little while before the RPMs stabilize and work for all the variants out there.
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