Re: [Opensync-users] two basic (FAQ) questions by noob

[Daniel G. <dg...@su...>]

On Saturday 12 January 2008 19:38:48 Jerzy Jalocha N wrote:
> * Opensync looks like a relatively young project to me. (Your latest
> release is labeled 0.35). How stable and SECURE is it? Is it
> recommended for a production environment already, or do you regard it
> more as a product under development?
Secure or safe?

As long as you don't run it as administrator/root it's quite secure ;)

Stable or safe? No, not yet...

Some simple setups are known to work quite well - some quite experimental and 
unstable.

Currently we recommend everyone to make backups of everything for getting in 
touch with OpenSync.

I would say that OpenSync is currently in Alpha state...

>
> * What I am really looking for, is a tool for synchronizing
> directories over the network. Your File-Sync Plugin seems to do
> exactly that, but the FAQ entry is really very limited. It would be
> nice, if you could describe more about it's uses, features, actual
> development status, and specially how it relates/compares with other
> solutions like rsync.

At the moment OpenSync is actually lacking in synchronization of _huge_ files 
and it's not yet possible to synchronize several instances of OpenSync which 
each other...

The strength of OpenSync is currently of syncing tiny data in different 
formats. (PIM data is the best example ...). And this only in the role 
as "Server", the "Client" role is missing. It's the most requested feature... 
and will be there... but not before 0.40.

For syncing filesystems i guess rsync is still the best choice. Or if you're 
looking for something more userfriendly you might check unison (iirc). Maybe 
in the future we can make the Synchronization framework more generic and 
solve the problem to synchronize _huge_ data.

Right now OpenSync has to read everything in memory at once. If you would 
synchronize a DVD ISO with 9GB, you'll need at least 9GB * N. N would stand 
for the number of member which are involved in syncing. This "limitation" 
comes from the OpenSync Synchronization Engine, which is currently hardcoded 
to act as "Server" and read all changes in memory, (convert them if needed), 
compare the changes, map the changed entries, do conflict resolution (if 
any), and commit changes to the other parties/members.

This currently fits perfectly the needs of common PIM Synchronization 
protocols, which are designed to do only "Slow Syncing". It's basically a 
very simple way to synchronize which consists of:
- (fast) syncing, which only transfer the latest changes (since last sync)
- slow syncing, which transfer everything (needed if last sync failed, or 
party got synced in meanwhile with another party - to stay in sync)

OpenSync 0.3x is currently our development branch to introduce some more 
feature like different capabilities. Which is (again) more content/format 
related stuff ... and without any use for plain file syncing.

With the release of OpenSync 0.40 we should think about to get rid of those 
described limitation about...

>
> We noobs out there, searching for solutions to our problems, often
> have a hard time choosing the right tools. And I am under the
> impression, that many times interesting new tools and projects are
> overlooked because of lacking information or documentation.

I see this problem as well. Our development ressource are very limited 
currently... so sorry about the lacking information and the still early alpha 
stage of this code.

best regards,
Daniel