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mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphonemainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphonePosted Jun 23, 2012 22:27 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone by dlang Parent article: Why We're Fighting for an Open Cloud (Linux.com)
Well, we actually use DropBox across LANs simply because it works. And it also works across WANs.
It's clearly not optimal, sure. But it works everywhere.
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mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jun 23, 2012 23:48 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
but you don't use dropbox to replace NFS type network filesystems, you use dropbox to do different (probably archival type) things instead.
dropbox is not a replacement for NFS type things, it's a different beast that does different things.
mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jun 24, 2012 0:04 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
We actually DO use it somewhat like NFS. Our molecular biologists write code on their laptops in a folder which is synced with a folder on our large server.
Most of time they run things locally, but if they need a lot of computing power then they can log into the cluster server and run things there. And results will be synced back to their laptops. Yes, there's a small lag in replication, but it's just a few seconds usually.
I'd argue that this is a superior solution to using NFS.
mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jun 24, 2012 0:18 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
following your logic, git is a better filesystem that NFS or dropbox because it provides version control features.
but I don't think that any of the git developers would take you seriously if you started saying that git was a replacement for NFS.
you are using dropbox to archive data and to access that archive from multiple places.
that is vastly different from the network filesystem approach where the application and user treat the remote storage like it was local storage.
mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jun 24, 2012 0:27 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yes, git would be great for these kind of tasks if it could do fast automatic replication. I've tried to move our scientists to git, but they resist. Indeed, DropBox works just fine for them - they don't need to do explicit commits, pushes and pulls. You just change a file and it's changed on the server.
Oh, and they're using rsnapshot for backups. So git's ability to store history is not really a selling point.
>that is vastly different from the network filesystem approach where the application and user treat the remote storage like it was local storage
So DropBox works great for a lot of people simply because it doesn't try to do everything.
mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jun 24, 2012 6:20 UTC (Sun) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
I've tried to get something like dropbox-via-git with a smallish python app:
https://gitorious.org/synkie
It's a console app, inspired by sparkleshare and dvcs-autosync. As it works for me, and was written by me, it might have many rough edges though.
Feedback and patches welcome.
mainframe -> minicomputer -> PC -> smartphone Posted Jul 1, 2012 2:55 UTC (Sun) by jnahmias (subscriber, #16282) [Link]
Sounds like you want git-annex: http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/
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