Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Building a Personal FOSS Cloud?
An anonymous reader writes "Cloud-based personal data management is pretty cool... if you don't mind entrusting the entirety of your personal data to a gigantic corporation. Apart from the risks of their doing unseemly things with your data, also the security of your data is entirely in their unreliable hands. So, is it possible to build my own personal data repository, where for example, I can store my contacts and calendars to sync to multiple devices? This could be hosted on any third party hosting service assuming also that all of my data was encrypted at the data level. So even if the host wanted to look at my data, all they'd see is 1s and 0s. What are the options for the tinfoil hat wearing FOSS folks that want to participate in the cloud age?"
So even if the host wanted to look at my data, all they'd see is 1s and 0s.
That was the dumbest thing I read all day.
http://owncloud.org/
- Calendar
- Contacts
- dropbox like storage
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
At what point does this involve a cloud? Renting a server(providing ftp, for example) is easy, and doesn't require anything from the "cloud age".
Also, building a server or buying one secondhand is cheap, if you want to DIY.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
You can write "The Cloud" on it with a Sharpie if you absolutely must.
https://github.com/wurp/Friendly-Backup
It works now, with some bugs. The first targeted usecase is distributed backup.
However, it can store arbitrary read-only content-addressed data as well as signed labels that point point to a particular piece of CBA data to emulate mutable data.
I have a whole slew of plans beyond backup for it, but backup seemed like the thing everyone needs and would most like to have for free on a federated data store.
OMFG, the cloud. I got to have or do the cloud. Magic Ponies in the cloud!!!!
Seriously, wtf do you really need the cloud for? Is it going to magically sync all your different data together so you can access it all the time?
No, seriously, do you think it's going to sync all your data so you can use it and access it anywhere?
No, it's not. Sure, you can access you data anywhere, but duder, we've been doing that for a couple of decades now, way to join the late train.
Unfortunately, the various corporations don't want to agree to standards, so having docs/apps/whatever working with everything isn't in the "rape as much money as we can" business plan. so nothing is going to change.
Now let's look at the Megaupload thingy. That was cloud storage, file lockers. It's not around now, is it? That is what happens to clouds, the winds blow them away. The wind? Oh ya, in this case, that's the good old USA Government, working for their Pimps, the Music/Movie Industry. You think that can't happen to any "cloud" servers? Think again. OMG, Terrorist used that server, Child porn was on that server, boom! You're data, which has nothing to do with those 2 things, is gone also. Hope you make a backup. Oh, wait, the cloud was magically supposed to back it up for you?
Cloud has been around for awhile, but we called it what it was, the internet.
Be seeing you...
slashdot ate my last comment, so just check out the link
coding is life
You want the above? That's easy. Access to email from anywhere, access to my contacts and my calendar, how about access to all my files? Yep got that. Though it doesn't have a fancy name like "cloud". If I were into marketing I'd call it a cloud, but right now I'll stick to calling it an "internet facing linux machine"
Yeah it's not as exciting, but it does everything the so called cloud has done and it has done it for many years before this mythical cloud has existed. My phone sees the same set of files and emails as my home desktop PC, and there's a web interface to access all the above too.
Seriously just google "Linux Groupware" and maybe "Linux Web Fileserver" and you'll have everything that the cloud has.
Try the free open-source SparkleShare software and roll your your own cloud 100%. That would trump any cloud provider option if this is your concern, since all the disks and PCs are under your ownership and control.
SparkleShare is essentially a DropBox clone in terms of a GUI, which extends to recovering older versions with a right-click. It looks like DropBox, and it works like DropBox too. But it is just a scripted GIT environment. In fact if you already have a GIT Repo hosted on a server (or service) somewhere, SparkleShare is easily configured to wrk with it. Here's how you start from scratch, assuming you already have PGP keys shared with the server:
At the server, create a new, empty GIT repository:
git init --bare NEWREPOSITORY.git
At the workstation:
Normally, you might use something like the following commands to work with GIT. (these are not necessary if you use SparkleShare)
git clone ssh://user@example.com:port/home/user/NEWREPOSITORY.git
cd NEWREPOSITORY.git
git clone ssh://user@example.com:port/home/user/NEWREPOSITORY.git
The SparkleShare config:
Add Hosted Project...
Address:
ssh://user@example.com:port
Remote Path: /home/user/NEWREPOSITORY.git
This document explains how to add a layer of encryption, (which also works to secure services like DropBox btw: https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare/wiki/Encrypting-your-files-before-transfer
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
the safest storage is your own high speed server quality RAID 7 write-only drive
There's a readily available device for this that emulates a RAID 7 write-only drive but with better performance. It's called /dev/null.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)