AeroFS - Unlimited P2P File Sync

http://www.aerofs.com/learnmore.html

by makeramen • 16 years ago

202 56 16 years ago

ch• 16 years ago

According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size#Asymmetric_algorithm_k..., their choice in using 1024 bit keys might be a bit short-sighted.

weihan5• 16 years ago

thanks for pointing this out! we'll investigate this further and may increase the key length as necessary.

andre• 16 years ago

can you my own key?

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

well this is an unexpected but pleasant surprise :)

I suppose this is a good opportunity to let you guys know that the project IS very much alive and kicking still, and we've just released a new set of invites today (which I suppose is why we got posted to HN today, thanks!)

We've been very busy with coding and work, which is why we haven't really been updating the blog, but if you have any questions I'll be happy to continue answering them here

edit: FYI, the original discussion is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731

brunoqc• 16 years ago

Is there a offline mode only? If I have a laptop and a desktop and I want them to be in sync but only when I'm at home so I don't 3G or my friend's bandwidth.

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

We do support LAN-only sync (i.e. on an isolated ad-hoc network), which is what I think you're asking for :)

timdorr• 16 years ago

Do you support automatic versioning like Dropbox does?

Can we set up our own "cloud" server? I assume that would be as simple as getting a server somewhere and running the software on it. Related: Do you have a CLI alongside the GUI?

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

we don't support versioning in the sense of rolling back to an older version (yet). This is on our to do list. We do internal versioning for the purposes of conflict resolution though.

You can definitely setup your own "cloud" server just by running the software, but we don't have a CLI just yet. This is fairly high on the to do list though, as there's been a lot of interest in that feature!

illumin8• 16 years ago

To me, the cloud server is the biggest feature. I'm one of your alpha users and while I am impressed with the potential of the project, Ubuntu is not really a server OS. I would love to be able to throw it on a Red Hat box I have in the data center and have my own private cloud.

groby_b• 16 years ago

I know a blog seems low priority, but it'd probably be good to do at least some kind of occasional "We are alive!" update.

I checked out the project, saw "July 22" and automatically assumed it's yet another dead project. Glad to hear it's being worked on!

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

Agreed. We've been incredibly focused on the code and working with the early alpha users, so we've been neglecting the blog and our social media presence. We're working on fixing that.

vietor2• 16 years ago

Is this simple file sync service or a full distributed filesystem implementation?

EDIT: To be clear, I didn't mean 'simple' as in easy to implement or trivial or any other negative sense. But more in a functional goal sense, like 'uncomplicated'.

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

It's a fully distributed filesystem implementation.

jamesaguilar• 16 years ago

So sad that I missed this phase of invites, as this is something I've been looking for. A dropbox replacement, in filesystem, that has unlimited size. What could be better?

StavrosK4• 16 years ago

I signed up for your beta a year ago, I even chatted with you and begged you for one but I still haven't gotten my invite :(

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

My sincere apologies, we've been releasing invites at a slower pace in order to give us some time to solve some pressing bugs. Invites should start coming out quicker now :)

buster• 16 years ago

So far i must say that aerofs provides some features i'm missing elsewhere. Most importantly the possibility to have some directories synced with the cloud and some only on LAN/private.

Aerofs/Yuri have been very responsive and friendly on mail support, i like that a lot!

Thanks guys, and keep up the good work!

Yuri, what i am missing is some way to mark a directory to sync with the cloud. Usecase: I have some Windows directories in c:\users\xxx\ that i'd like to keep in sync. Obviously i can't link them to the aerofs-drive..

And now, to the 64bit linux version.. ;)

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

SSH and rsync? Or even better, use hg/bzr/git to maintain a version history of the files and then just sync across devices (it's uber easy with Mercurial, not sure about the other two). I personally use the latter (Mercurial).

nuclear_eclipse2• 16 years ago

At that point, why not use SparkleShare to simplify it?

Either way, hg/git/bzr don't work for a lot of cases, because they are extremely inefficient for synchronizing large files, such as music, photos, video, etc.

dabeeeenster• 16 years ago

Maybe because SparkleShare hasn't even been released yet?

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

True RE: large files that don't really need to be versioned. I use a mix of shell scripts that manage rsync'ing large files and mercurial for anything that isn't binary.

rmc2• 16 years ago

Or use unison, which is similar to rsync, but works 'both ways'

carterschonwald2• 16 years ago

unison is quite nice, but it does require being both sides, which can be problematic sometimes.

koenigdavidmj• 16 years ago

Or use Tra, by Russ Cox (Plan 9 and Go guru). It can handle more than two machines.

nodata• 16 years ago

Unison is unfortunately no longer under development.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/status.html

nuclear_eclipse2• 16 years ago

This is still in invite-only phase, and while I do have an account, I'm not actively using it yet for my primary files because there are still some features it lacks over Dropbox, namely:

* can't choose where local files are cached, it assumes where you want them

* no way to back up more than 1G to their "cloud", ie, no paid plans yet, which I would really like to have at least for my most unreplaceable files

* no way to share individual directories with other users, you must share entire "libraries" as they call them, which are basically top-level folders on your aerofs drive

* no way to make files publicly available for download

Other than those points, I think the service is a fantastic idea, and I do eagerly look forward to being able to switch from Dropbox for my photos, documents, etc. However, the above limitations mean that I can really only use it for a few extra things that I don't have room for on my Dropbox account, eg, music.

weihan5• 16 years ago

actually all of them are on our todo list--three of the four are already implemented but yet to be exposed to the user :)

evo_9• 16 years ago

Interesting/cool product.

One thing that threw me off - the term 'Aero' (for me) implied Windows only... No real easy solution there as I don't expect (or even think you need) to change the name, but maybe adding something like 'cross-platforming file sync without servers'.

Awesome none-the-less though!

StavrosK4• 16 years ago

As another datapoint, it didn't for me. It implied storing things in air.

arethuza• 16 years ago

I was vaguely aware of the Windows thing, but to me Aero == bubbly chocolate

grok2• 16 years ago

Is my disk space on used to store data for others in the p2p network?

yurisagalov7• 16 years ago

not unless you've explicitly invited those people to share/collaborate on files with you!

phlux• 16 years ago

What will your TOS be - what if something like a Wikileaks mirror is done across your system?

trotsky4• 16 years ago

http://www.aerofs.com/tos.html

they are certainly covered if they wanted to prevent it.

Sephr• 16 years ago

How is this different from Wuala?

huhtenberg• 16 years ago

I am guessing it's different by giving you full control over whom you are sharing your disk space with. And, perhaps, by having less blurred focus as an app in general and not trying to be social disk/file collaboration sharing/discovery/you-name-it everything like Wuala did.

TheAmazingIdiot• 16 years ago

I love the top image. Check out the file "How to earn HN karma"

I think you found out :)

rb2k_• 16 years ago

I remember talking to one of the devs some months ago when first signing up. Fun guy, great product.

It's a shame that I never got an invite, can't wait to get my hands on this :)

trotsky4• 16 years ago

even behind your pesky office firewall

Curious - can you sync between two such locations (nat/default deny/no udp)? i.e. will you bounce connections through your host or does one side have to open an inbound port?

trotsky4• 16 years ago

It would seem perhaps that our impressions of "pesky office firewalls" are a bit different :(

http://www.aerofs.com:8080/signup

Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.aerofs.com:8080

weihan5• 16 years ago

Just fixed. It's now https://www.aerofs.com/signup instead :)

mgunes• 16 years ago

How will you be licensing and pricing it once it reaches 1.0? Any plans for making it available under a free software license, dual or otherwise? I know quite a few people who'd be inclined to pay for and contribute to a solution of the kind you provide and Dropbox and Ubuntu One don't (very decentralized, secure, fast, works local-only) with the condition that it's free-as-in-freedom.

davidu• 16 years ago

I've been waiting for someone to create this.

Since libTorrent was released, I figured someone would do something like this. No idea if Aero is using libTorrent, but the idea was a natural evolution.

This looks well executed, thanks. Can't wait to see the next steps.

palewery• 16 years ago

I hate to say it but I would use this if my peers were just my Facebook friends. not that I don't trust 1024 bit encryption, I just don't like my info on strangers boxes even thought it is encrypted

alnayyir• 16 years ago

Is there a way I can use this to replace Unison, which I lean heavily on but am unhappy with?

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

urza• 16 years ago

I've been using Wuala for last 2 years, and I am very happy.. I sotre there all my important data.. private documents, projects and stuff I want to share.. all my data is encypted and reduntantly stored in the web and peers, atomatic sync, sharing, p2p.. its even better than dropbox because I can trade space so I have about 10 GB for free and my data si truly encrypted so even the provider cant acces them.

http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/features

AeroFS - Unlimited P2P File Sync

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