[Owncloud] OwnClouds Future

Sun Mar 21 21:10:10 UTC 2010

Hi,

> I see one flaw - for this you need desktop implementation of OwnCloud
> in a form of a
> daemon and an application for syncing.
>    
Yeah, I was proposing an implementation using FUSE because this way you 
can make applications wait until a file becomes available before 
allowing them access to it. This would prevent race conditions like 
starting firefox, firefox creating a new profile because the existent 
one hasn't been downloaded yet and then being unable to download the 
original file because the new one is locked.
I consider this essential if you want more functionality than dropbox 
(eg. using owncloud for your whole home directory).
> I plan on working on this (daemon and sync app), either for KDE or
> GNOME organizations, but it would be great if you would like to
> collaborate as our projects overlap - perhaps work together on the
> backend, I'll work on the UI, and you can modify the apps to make it
> work with OwnCloud.
>    
I think it would be orders of magnitude easier and faster to do decent 
file syncing (that is, not too slow) for dot files instead of modifying 
every application out there to use a custom library for saving settings.

The other thing is that at least for the moment I intend to work through 
GSoC, and as this is a KDE project, I suppose my work would need to be 
mostly DE independent or KDE-specific. By the way, are you also a GSoC 
student?
> I am also inviting the other guy that wishes to do UI for other DE, to
> collaborate. Reusing effort and collaborating is good.
Sure. The only thing to keep in mind is that in the context of GSoC 
there's not too much time, so the tasks would need to be fairly discrete.
> The backend and
> the UI would be written in python.
>    
I was also going to suggest Python, with the mention that I'd like to 
test the disk and network I/O speed more thoroughly.
> That being said, the approach you mentioned is a very rough one. I
> have some ideas
> in mind that might improve situation, namely:
>
> - collect basic info about the computer, and attach it to particular
> home folder in OwnCloud
>    
That sounds like something to use when otherwise things start breaking.
> - if you want to mount it on another computer, inspect that computer
> and see if there are
>   any potential problems
>    
Those being file conflicts?
> - if there are no problem, just mount it, otherwise say there might be
> potential conflicts
>
> That being said, I'd say we should avoid syncing dot-files for now:
> its not easy to get
> it right, and you still get most of the functionality. However I can
> see that this has some
> shortcomings, especially in applications like firefox that holds
> profile data in such
> files and directories, so we *might* selectively choose that.
>    
Almost all applications save user data in dot files. Personally, I have 
switched between different distributions and kept my home directory 
intact for a number of times without encountering any significant 
problem. What we'd need is an option for creating symlinks, because 
files used by the same application might have slightly different names 
on different distributions.
> I must say that I am really happy to see so much interest in OwnCloud. Let's see
> what the future holds for us.
>
> Cheers,
> Mario
>    
Exciting times ahead :)

Thanks,
Cosmin
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 05:18, Cosmin Gorgovan<cosmin at linux-geek.org>  wrote:
>    
>> I think it should be possible to develop an webdav fuse driver optimized
>> for this kind of use;
>> and to modify KDM to 1) allow this kind of logins and 2)mount your
>> owncloud as your home directory after logging in
>>
>> This would result in having the same dot-files on every computer you log
>> in on, so you'd basically get what you want (and probably get in some
>> trouble if you are running significantly different versions of the
>> apps). With decent optimisations, I think this would work quite OK,
>> maybe except for the initial sync where you'd be limited by the
>> bandwidth, transfer overhead and number of files.
>>
>> Unless someone else sees a fatal flaw, I might just turn this into my
>> GSoC proposal for OwnCloud.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Cosmin
>>
>>
>> On 03/20/2010 10:48 PM, cody at killsudo.info wrote:
>>      
>>> Could OwnCloud be used to seperate kde and the home folder from any physical
>>> computer.
>>>
>>> I would one day like to be able to keep my kde desktop/resources/data in the
>>> cloud and simple use a domain login to request and cache my desktop to any
>>> kde4 pc or device. I imagine kdm supporting a login so I could specifiy
>>> cody at killsudo.info and it would connect to my owncloud instance on the server
>>> and load my desktop and files. My widgets, themes, mail, tags,  etc would all
>>> be pulled down.
>>>
>>> I would even like to push akonadi to the server and connect my kde apps up to
>>> the cloud to store and send/receive data.
>>>
>>> A phone running kde(or any app that uses open-standards) could connect to my
>>> same instance and using akondi pull my mail, contacts, etc. Could even stream
>>> music on the go from my owncloud instance to the phone.
>>>
>>> Internet speeds are getting fast enough even wirelessly to make this a final
>>> reality.
>>>
>>> Right now I use libgcal and akonadi resources to plan my calendar then push
>>> the calendar to my google calendar that can then be shared with family.
>>>
>>> I would also like to see a nice web frontend over owncloud as you are doing
>>> now that lets me access my data, contacts, etc in a browser if need be to make
>>> quick changes or share a file.
>>>
>>> So, am I crazy?
>>>
>>> Signed
>>>
>>> Cody
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Owncloud mailing list
>>> Owncloud at kde.org
>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
>>>
>>>        
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
>>
>>