acmeattic-devel team mailing list archive

[krishnan <krishnan.parthasarathi@xxxxxxxxx>]

>     Yeah, it does seem to be the case that SpiderOak has a lot more
>     useful features, and their guarantee about security is much more
>     believable than Dropbox's. While we can still pick and choose the
>     features that we would like to implement, we need to pay close
>     attention to designing the backend architecture that allows these
>     features to be built.
>
>     In particular, I would like to see the following high level
>     features built in AcmeAttic: sync any folder on the client's
>     filesystem with the attic, sync from multiple devices, download
>     (and sync) files that were synced from a different machine.
>     Encryption should be optional for specific files or folders (it
>     should by default be encrypted, but the user can change this if
>     required). Sharing should also be flexible, but I don't think we
>     need to implement the feature of creating a shared virtual folder
>     that can have any subset of files on the attic.
>
>     --
>     Aditya
>
>
> I think, the attic should serve as a logical drive for the user over 
> the network like in the DropBox model.
Are you in favour of differentiating the client machines from which the 
files were uploaded to the attic? I think we must leave it to the user 
to choose if wants to partition his backup data based on source client 
machine by creating separate folders. We should not make any 
distinctions based on client machine and must allow syncing of all files 
across all client installations.
> Suppose, the user syncs his files to the attic from a client  (say, 
> his laptop) to the attic. Now, the same user can sync the files from 
> attic to another client (in a specified path) and use it as if it is 
> just another folder on this client.
Who specifies the path where the file in attic needs to be placed in new 
client installations? Even if we store it as a user preference in the 
server, we will have trouble implementing it across different operating 
systems. eg user might not have access to a location in a linux 
installation for which he had access in Windows. What would we do if the 
user changes the location from another client installation and expects 
it to change in already installed client machines as well? The simplest 
approach would be to pull files from attic and place it in the "Attic" 
folder in the new client installation and not bother about where in the 
filesystem it must be placed. This also gives the user a single location 
to observe what he/she has backed up on the attic from this client machine.
> Also, the user need not place all the files in the "Attic" folder in 
> his/her laptop (the first client). Instead he can give 
> symlinks/shortcuts to the folders and place it in the "Attic" folder 
> of the client.
I think you are talking about client using symlinks for tracking changes 
to files/folders that user wishes to backup on the attic. The symlinking 
also provides the user a single view of all files backedup.
> Cheers,
> Bharath
cheers,
krishnan