Ifolder Server Review 98
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."
iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:5, Informative)
iFolder [ifolder.com]
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:1)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:1)
It's quite handy if you aren't using it for collaboration/file sharing. And quite secure.
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:3, Interesting)
This just isn't that big of a product. Whether it will be or not, is up to the development team, but it does exactly what they say it does.
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:5, Informative)
v3 has much better sharing support in it, but even then, for the use case you describe, an NSS folder would be the way to go.
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
On UNIX file locking is implemented by the use of lockfiles... and only where it really matters. If an application needs lock on a file, it writes a
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
System enforced file locking might be a necessity in some cases.
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
I really think that if you have a common file, like a spreadsheet, shared among several users that modify it constantly, is much better to make it talk to a database backend... or replace it with a custom software.
Linux file locking (Score:2)
According to this document [www.swb.de], "Starting with 1.3, L
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:2)
BS. File-locking is an old DOS feature that's been implemented in almost every NOS used, including OS/2 and Netware.
Unix's versoin of file-locking is a kludge IMO. Not that it matters, because at this point almost every "PC" application expects it to work a certain way and it's not a philosophical question about how to implement it. (However Windows could come with better tools to deal with locked files.)
Re:iFolder for Windows -- locking issues?! (Score:1)
slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
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 in
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ [upenn.edu] seems to be the offical homepage.
too bad there are no screenshots of gtk interface
thank you
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
"Unison is no longer under active development as a research project. (Our research efforts in this area are now focused on a follow-on project called Harmonymore details are available on the Harmony home page.) At this point, there is no one whose job it is to maintain Unison, fix bugs, or answer questions.
However, the original developers are all still using Unison daily. It will continue to be maintained and supported for the foreseeable future, and we will occasionally release new versions with bug f
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2, Insightful)
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).
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
it seems that running unison with -auto -batch does what i want - it syncs the thing, then pops up a window showing the status and conflicts. nnice.
wonder why it isn't widely known...
anyway, i looked over bugs & todo lists - impressive
most is in a "not so important" cathegory, a lot is about windows (that i don't care about currently) - but some things would be really nice to have.
hopefully this little publicity will atract some
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
is it possible to run commandline version to update definite changes, skip conflicts and pop up gui with conflicts only ?
i would like to automate it so that complete beginners in linux would have no difficulties using it.
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:1)
Also, conflicts
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:1)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:1)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:1)
Read below for my solution that provides bidirectional syncing with rsync.
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
rsync -avz
rsync -avz remotesystem:/bar/
You just sync from local to remote, then remote to local. Rsync is smart enough not to send anything over the wire that hasn't changed, so if someone hasn't modified anything on the remote end, then the second command will not transfer anything.
What you effectively get out of this though is a filesystem where you can't delete anything (if it's th
Re:slimmer alternatives ? (Score:2)
to be fair, i don't see the point from the second command, except that, as you mentioned, files deleted on one of sources will reappear.
after the site is back up, check out what unison (and ifolder) provides - that is a real two-way sync which can handle deletions and multiple users making changes to their own copy of fils, then syncing it with a central repository. and always getting the latest merged version of data, except for conflicts (two users making changes to the
What is ifolder? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:4, Insightful)
"If you are going to share quite a big amount of data over this server, the server itself should have enough storage since it keeps a copy of every file"
Where else did you think it was going to keep a copy?
I think its basically an MS Sharepoint-type document sharing solution, of which you will find umpteen other examples on freshmeat.net.
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=document+managemen
Several of them even claim to be 'Enterprise-class' or 'professional'. Now an article comparing all of these with 'iserver' and sharepoint would be worth frontpaging on slashdot..
Barry
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:2)
How is command line access supported by iFolder?
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:1)
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:3, Insightful)
automatic file synchronisation (both ways) isn't built into ftp servers/clients, i think
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:1)
I read the whole article (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:1)
I am open to alternatives to the Windows Server with Active Di
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:1)
what would be nice is a comparison of this to BitTorrent (+RSS ?) rsynch etc etc. some clues as to how to implement this in a large as well as small org. my org is all windows/novell/suse so i figure i can ifolder..
1. some desktop software as long as there arnt things like registry changes that need to go allong
2. some data files that all
Why Open Source is screwed (Score:1, Flamebait)
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 pa
Re:What is ifolder? (Score:1)
You have an iFolder server, you make it accessible over your corporate LAN, WLAN, and the internet. Now you install an iFolder client on your workstation, your laptop, and your home PC.
What this enables you to do is to be working on a project at work, save the file, no worries about backing it up to FTP or emailing it to yourself or what not, when you get home, your home computer has the updated version of your project anyway. You go to work the next da
What is ifolder about? (Score:1)
neither in the blurb, nor the article, do you actually state what ifolder is or isn't.
Re:What is ifolder about? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Purpose? (Score:1)
FTP (Score:2)
Re:FTP (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:FTP (Score:2)
person 2 changes files on the server using his desktop that are synced back
person 1 changes some files (or even worse.. those same files person 2 changed) while he is on the plane.
and he gets back to work and tries to synchonize his data back to the server.
what does ifolder do in such cases?
Re:FTP (Score:2)
Again - iFolder is not meant as a file sharing replacement where files are locked and only one user at a time can change a file. Just like in SVN or CVS, conflicts will arise that you have to deal with. But they are recognized and they give you a variety of ways to handle it (in the end choosing which file 'wins') and, of cours
Re:FTP (Score:2)
Re:FTP (Score:2)
Re:FTP (Score:2)
You have to log into an FTP server and send/receive files. Basically, it has all sorts of security, access, and automation features you don't get with FTP because FTP is just a file transfer protocol.
running iFolder on FreeBSD (Score:2)
I need this to work with Linux, OS X and XP clients (my wife needs XP for online classes, thus that support option
Re:running iFolder on FreeBSD (Score:2)
Re:running iFolder on FreeBSD (Score:2)
I can't comment on BSD, but it works with OS X, Linux, and XP quite nicely. I think that's one of its strongest points is cross platform file access and collaboration.
This would be more effective... (Score:2, Funny)
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
Re:This would be more effective... (Score:2)
Re:This would be more effective... (Score:2)
Cheers,
Roger
Re:This would be more effective... (Score:2)
Re:This would be more effective... (Score:2)
(Isn't there a flash plugin for Lynx yet? My god, how long has it been?)
No way (Score:2)
One of Novell's Coolest Products (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:One of Novell's Coolest Products (Score:2)
Not even close. I just happen to have overseen a significant Novell deployment where iFolder was one of our more popular offerings with our users. Never have worked for Novell, sold it, etc. Only deployed it. Life with Novell wasn't without its pains, but overall we found it a great suite of products for what we needed to accomplish.
Sorry - no astroturfing here.
a sledgehammer to nail in a tack (Score:2)
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
What iFolder is.... (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:What iFolder is.... (Score:1)
Re:Thinking different. (Score:2, Informative)
I'm glad you know what iFolder is about... (Score:2)
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.
Re:I'm glad you know what iFolder is about... (Score:1)
ifolder than who? (Score:2)
IFolder concept great implimentation nightmare (Score:1)
However, do not even try to install this product on fedora core (It might be easier on fedora core 5 becaus
Re:IFolder concept great implimentation nightmare (Score:1)
Check it out http://www.ifolder.com/index.php/ [ifolder.com]
Re:IFolder concept great implimentation nightmare (Score:3, Informative)
I'm trying to get it built for x86_64 and have run into a few snag which I've outlined here [baptiste.us]. 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
Comparison to FolderShare (Score:1)