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Canonical gave up on operating its Ubuntu One cloud storage service more than a year ago, but this week it released the system's file-syncing code under an open source AGPLv3 license.
Though Canonical is primarily known for its open source Ubuntu operating system, it also has some closed source products and services, including Ubuntu One.
Ubuntu's desktop "on its own will die"—Shuttleworth [said, explaining] why Canonical must expand. "Today, we're happy to be open sourcing the biggest piece of our Ubuntu One file syncing service," Canonical Director of Online Services Martin Albisetti wrote. "The code we're releasing is the server side of what desktop clients connected to when syncing local or remote changes. This is code where most of the innovation and hard work went throughout the years, where we faced most of the scaling challenges and the basis on which other components were built upon."
Canonical hopes the code will be "useful for developers to read through, fork into their own projects or pick out useful bits and pieces."
What project ideas would you use this code for?
(Score: 5, Informative) by number6 on Thursday August 13 2015, @10:15PM
__How to Sync Files Between Computers Without Storing Them in the Cloud
__http://www.howtogeek.com/166424/how-to-sync-files-between-computers-without-storing-them-in-the-cloud/
__Jan 2013
So you have multiple computers and you want to keep your files in sync, but you don’t want to store them on someone else’s servers. You’ll want a service that synchronizes files directly between your computers.
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BitTorrent Sync [bittorrent.com]
BitTorrent Sync uses BitTorrent to transfer files — in private and in encrypted form, so no one can snoop on them. Just install it, select a folder, and generate a secret. Provide that secret to anyone — either another computer you own or a friend you would like to sync files with — and your folder will be automatically kept in sync across all configured PCs. This happens directly — either over a local network or over the Internet — using the powerful and fast BitTorrent technology.
BitTorrent Sync offers clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so you can use it to sync your files with computers running any popular operating system. Unlike many other services, its features are completely free and it doesn’t require you run a separate server.
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AeroFS [aerofs.com]
AeroFS is free, assuming you don’t need its more advanced features. It creates a Dropbox-like folder on your computer and files sync automatically between the computers you set up. You can share each folder with one additional person, but you’ll need the paid version to share with additional people after that. It doesn’t use BitTorrent and relies on a user account system — there’s a central server that manages user accounts and sharing, but files aren’t hosted on AeroFS’s servers. They’re only stored on your computers. AeroFS promises that it “can’t even see your file names.”
Its interface is very similar to Dropbox’s, even down to the tour that appears when you install it. It’s a very Dropbox-like solution, but it skips the cloud so you can sync unlimited files. Like Dropbox, it supports Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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Cubby [cubby.com]
LogMeIn’s Cubby offers cloud storage, but it also offers a “DirectSync” feature. DirectSync allows you to synchronize an unlimited number of files directly between computers, skipping the cloud. Microsoft’s Windows Live Mesh used to do this, but Live Mesh has been discontinued. Cubby is available for both Windows and Mac OS X; there’s no Linux support.
You will have to create an account, and cloud storage is enabled by default in Cubby. While DirectSync was previously free when we recommended it as an alternative to Windows Live Mesh, DirectSync is now a paid feature. Unless you really love Cubby, you’re probably better off with another solution.
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Roll Your Own Server
These are the two biggest options. However, these aren’t the only ways to sync files directly between your own computers. There are other options you have, although those solutions aren’t as easy to use and will require more manual configuration:
There are many other options you can use. Anything with a self-hosted server component or any sort of solution that automatically creates incremental backups and uploads to a remote server will do, but you’ll have to host your own server software in both cases. Solutions like BitTorrent Sync and AeroFS are the most convenient because they’re not made to require a separate server — they just run on your existing computers.
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Disadvantages
Of course, there are a number of disadvantages to doing it this way. You’ll have to ensure you have backup copies of your files, as there’s no central backup copy in the cloud on someone else’s servers. There’s also no way to access these files from your phone or tablet with a mobile app, as you can with the Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive mobile apps. They’re not stored on a central server the apps can pull from; they’re just automatically synced between your computers.
And, of course, your computers must be powered on at the same time or they won’t be able to sync directly with each other.
In return, you get the ability to sync an unlimited number of files and keep them entirely under your control. It’s up to you which tradeoffs you want to make.
(Score: 2) by number6 on Friday August 14 2015, @01:39AM
__How I Created My Own Personal Cloud Using BitTorrent Sync, Owncloud, and Raspberry Pi
__http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/05/23/how-i-created-my-own-personal-cloud-using-bittorrent-sync-owncloud-and-raspberry-pi/
__May 2013
I’ve had a Raspberry Pi lying around the house for a few months now. Every once in a while I’ll take it out and tinker around with it. When BitTorrent released the BitTorrent Sync Alpha a few weeks back, I decided to see what kind of options I had for using the program with my Raspberry Pi.
BitTorrent Sync [bittorrent.com], an awesome software allowing you to sync folders between machines using P2P. No cloud necessary. I’ve been using it for syncing several gigabytes of RAW photos and video across my various machines. There is the occasional scenario however, where I’ve wanted to grab a few files, but my other machine is turned off. To solve this problem, I’m using a Raspberry Pi as a low power, always-on device with Sync installed.
Just for kicks, I’m also using the open-source Owncloud [owncloud.org] to provide me with a web interface for accessing my files from any computer, including my mobile phone. Sound interesting?
If you have a DIY attitude and aren’t afraid of a few terminal commands, then read on to learn about how I did it.
First, you’ll need the following:
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Step 1: Setting up Raspbian
Fire up your favorite torrent client and download the Raspbian “wheezy” image. Click here for the link [raspberrypi.org].
I won’t go in to full detail on how to write the images to the SD card. There are plenty of resources available for that. If you are using Windows, check out this link [elinux.org]. If you are on a Mac, check out this link [elinux.org].
When that is done, plug the SD card into your RasPi and fire it up. For the initial configuration screen that appears I recommend setting your username and password, expanding the root partition, setting your boot_behavior to start desktop on boot and enabling SSH. Exit the configuration screen and you’ll eventually be presented with the Wheezy desktop.
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Step 2: Installing BitTorrent Sync
Make sure you have an ethernet cable plugged in to your RasPi, and fire up lxterminal (there is a shortcut on the desktop). We’ll need to download the binary for Sync. To do this, type in:
Then change the download directory:
extract the tar.gz:
And finally, run the program:
Now, we want to make sure Sync will run at startup. This requires an extra step. In terminal, change your directory to the config folder:
Create a new folder called “autostart”
Now create a new text document. You can use the leafpad program that comes pre-installed. The contents of the text document need to be as follows:
Save this file in the newly created ~/.config/autostart as syncstart.desktop
Sync is now up and running on your tiny Raspberry Pi. You can access the web GUI by opening a browser and typing in [YOUR IP ADDRESS]:8888/gui (example: 192.168.1.2:8888/gui). You can find the IP address for your RasPi by opening terminal and typing in ifconfig
At this point, you can stop right here. If your SD card is big enough, you can set up Sync and have your always-on Sync device….but why stop there? Lets add a thumb drive so that we can have more space.
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Step 3: Adding a thumb drive
As mentioned, you have plenty of options for adding hard drive space to your Raspberry Pi. If you want to, you can plug in an external hard drive and go crazy. For this blog post however, I’m just using a micro-sd thumb drive. I love how small it is.
Plug the thumb drive in to the Raspberry Pi. (if you are short on usb ports, I would suggest setting up remote desktop [jeremymorgan.com]).
Open up terminal and type in:
Find your thumb drive. Mine was at the bottom and was called /dev/sda1. Take note of the name. You’ll need it. Format your hard drive by doing the following (replace sda1 with the name of your drive):
If you aren’t interested in Owncloud, then you can stop here and simply set up Sync to point to /media/SYNC. If you are interested in Owncloud, then keep reading.
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Step 4: Setting up Owncloud
Setting up Owncloud on linux is a mess of various terminal commands. Thankfully, Github user Petrockblog has made it very simple. He created a shell script [github.com] for installing and updating Owncloud. Simply do the following:
Install Github:
Download the latest setup script:
And execute the script:
...and wait. This will take a while. Grab a coffee. Watch this [youtube.com] video. When it is done, you can navigate to [Your IP Address]/owncloud to set everything up----It is very important that you click on “advanced” and set your data folder to /media/SYNC before finishing setup.
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Step 5: Combining BitTorrent Sync and Owncloud
First we need to clear up a few file permissions. Add sync to the www-data group:
Allow sync to write to the thumb drive:
Now open up the BitTorrent Sync WebUI ( [YOUR IP ADDRESS]:8888/gui ) and add a folder. You’ll want to add /media/SYNC/USERNAME/files where "username" is the name you selected when setting up Owncloud. Generate a key and you are done. You can now use that key to set up a folder on any computer you want. Any files added to that folder will be synced to your RasPi and be available through the Owncloud web interface. While this is pretty cool, there’s just one more little step to make this much more useful.
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Step 6: Combining BitTorrent Sync and Owncloud
To access our files from anywhere, we’ll need to first set up a static IP address. If you used the wifi dongle I recommended, you can simply plug it in and it will work. Open terminal and type in:
You’ll need to make a few changes in order to get a static IP address. Below is what I ended up using after a bit of trial and error. Your address, gateway, net mask, SSID, and PSK will need to be changed according to your network. The settings may be different if you used a different wireless adaptor, or if you are only using an ethernet cable.
Finally, you’ll need to forward a port so that owncloud can be accessed from outside networks. I just forwarded port 80 for the IP address of my RasPi. In this example, my IP address when using wifi is 192.168.1.22. The procedure for forwarding ports is different for every router. If I grab my real IP address from a site such as this one [whatsmyip.org], I can now access Owncloud and my Sync files from anywhere by going to [MyRealIpAddress]/owncloud (where the IP address is what you find from the website I linked to). You can also set up Owncloud with an Android [google.com] or iOS [apple.com] client for mobile access.
Phew. If you made it this far, congrats. I had fun creating my own personal BitTorrent-powered cloud and I hope you found this walkthrough helpful. There are so many uses for something like BitTorrent Sync, and I think we’ve only begun to scratch the surface.
If you have found any creative uses for BitTorrent Sync, then share with us on our forums [bittorrent.com]. We’d love to hear about it.
-- EOF --
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:50AM
Thanks for posting this. I have a RPi laying around at home. I'll give this a shot when I get back to town.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @04:43AM
The 3 first options are proprietary, therefore unusable.
(Score: 1) by ptman on Friday August 14 2015, @09:21AM
Is this the same ac that posted the original desire? So hard to keep the track of the discussion with anonymous users