Syncing

The ownCloud product Infinite Scale is going to be released in version five soon. The latest stable version is 4.0.5 and I am sure everybody checked it out already and is blown away by it’s performance, elegance and ease of use. No, not yet? Ok, well, in that case, here comes rescue: With the little script described here, it becomes really easy to start Infinite Scale to check it out on your computer. It makes it really easy and quick for you, without Linux super admin powers whatsoever. ...

A few days ago Volker Krause posted this blog about the Nextcloud conference - a very interesting read. One of the topics is the VFS (Virtual Filesystem-) API for the Linux desktop. Indeed that is a topic for us at ownCloud as well, and I like to share our perspective on it, discussing it in the scope of the free desktop. The topic is very important, as “syncing” of data from and to cloud storages has changed over time. From having all files mirrored from client to server and vice versa, it has now shifted to keep all files in the cloud, and have them as so called placeholders on the desktop. That means that most files on the client appear with size zero to save space, but the complete filesystem structure is available. ...

It is a great idea to encrypt files on client side before uploading them to an ownCloud server if that one is not running in controlled environment, or if one just wants to act defensive and minimize risk. Some people think it is a great idea to include the functionality in the sync client. I don’t agree because it combines two very complex topics into one code base and makes the code difficult to maintain. The risk is high to end up with a kind of code base which nobody is able to maintain properly any more. So let’s better avoid that for ownCloud and look for alternatives. ...

The first part of this little blog series explained the basic operations of chunk file upload as we set it up for discussion. This part goes a bit beyond and talks about an addition to that, called announcing the upload. With the processing described in the first part of the blog, the upload is done savely and with a clean approach, but it also has some drawbacks. Most notably the server does not know the target filename of the uploaded file upfront. Also it does not know the final size or mimetype of the target file. That is not a problem in general, but imagine the following situation: A big file should be uploaded, which would exceed the users quota. That would only become an error for the user once all uploads happened, and the final upload directory is going to be moved on the final file name. ...

Today, we’re happy to release the best ownCloud Desktop Client ever to our community and users! It is ownCloud Client 1.8.0 and it will push syncing with ownCloud to a new level of performance, stability and convenience. [caption id=“attachment_586” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] The Share Dialog[/caption]This release brings a new integration into the operating system file manager. With 1.8.0, there is a new context menu that opens a dialog to allow the user to create a public link on a synced file. This link can be forwarded to other users who get access to the file via ownCloud. ...

Often questions come up about the meaning of FileIDs and ETags. Both values are metadata that the ownCloud Server stores for each of the files and directories in the server database. These values are fundamentally important for the integrity of data in the overall system. Here are some thoughts about what they are why these are so important.This is mainly from a clients point of view, but there are other use cases as well. ...

Last week, Thomas, Christian and myself were attending a workshop in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneve, Switzerland. CERN is a very inspiring place, attracting intelligent people from all over the world to get behind the secrets of our being. I felt honored to be at the place where for example the world wide web was invented. The event was called Workshop on Cloud Services for File Synchronisation and Sharing and was hosted by CERN IT department. There have been around 100 attendees. ...

You might have heard, ownCloud Client 1.4.0 was released last week. It is available from our sync clients page for all major desktop platforms, investigate the Changelog. Danimos Visual Guide has outlined the new stuff in the release already, so no need to repeat it here. You should install and try it, that seems to be the opinion of many people who tried it. Also people who shared their critical view on the client very publically in the past are much more pleased now with 1.4.0. One example is a recent blog post on BITBlokes. It is a blog about all kind of topics around FOSS. I regularly read it and often share its opinions. He concludes very positively about the 1.4.0 client. ...

2012 is slowly coming to an end and we all are looking forward to a few silent days around Christmas. But we did not want to leave to holidays without adding another thing to your vacation experience: I am happy to announce the first beta of the upcoming ownCloud Client release 1.2.0, ready now for you to test and enjoy under the tree. This is the first build with the new things we did in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, you will ...

On Friday I arrived back from Berlin where I had the pleasure to work with my great colleague Danimo and our friends from Woboq, Markus and Olivier, in the Woboq Headquarter in Berlin Kreuzberg for a week. We thought that it might be fun to work together on csync, our sync engine under the hood of the ownCloud client. There were some issues that should be fixed and on the way we cleaned and improved quite some code in csync. ...