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digitalderbs writes:
"A perennial problem facing computer users is how to keep documents, pictures, music and other personal files synchronized between computers. Robust uni-directional solutions, like rsync, and bi-directional solutions, like unison, have existed for a long time. However, these tools require some degree of manual intervention on a periodic basis. Simplified tools like Dropbox and bittorrent sync have emerged as popular, useful and automated alternatives, but these rely on closed-source software, which could be subject to backdooring. Open source solutions, like OwnCloud, are gaining traction, but are these open source platform robust and easy enough to maintain for routine and daily use? Moreover, distributed and encrypted file systems, like Ceph, are increasingly easy to use, but many of these do not work between Linux and OS X or Windows operating systems. What are your experiences and thoughts?"
(Score: 1) by zip on Monday March 24 2014, @09:10PM
Assuming you can manage to mount your /home on owncloud with webdav, that would probably be the easiest method (in terms of maintenance). I have not tried this, so YMMV.
(Score: 1) by jon3k on Monday March 24 2014, @09:44PM
You could configure it to sync your home directory. Just point the ownCloud client at your home directory.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by spxero on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:20AM
I have an OwnCloud site setup and while it's easy from an admin side and really full featured, the sync client is the pits. I find it tends to keep my machine from running at power saving CPU levels and is constantly syncing. I almost have to pause the thing on a regular basis and then force a manual re-sync, which is hit and miss. I use it mostly as a backup of my Dropbox directory, so anything going to Dropbox is technically going to OwnCloud as well, but I never have these problems with the Dropbox sync client. Now it is free, and I was able to share files with friends extremely easily once I created them an account on my server, but the client? Crap.
You can *kind* of use WebDAV for syncing, but be warned- with the defaults of how OwnCloud keeps deleted files, if you don't clear those out regularly your WebDAV sync will error out even though you're only using a fraction of your allotted storage space. IIRC it would give me the PHP white screen of death until I went in and manually deleted the files and then changed the keep deleted files option to either never or just a day.
I also try to use SeaFile for a similar purpose, and its client is worlds better than OwnCloud. I have still been unable to access the SeaFile server through a reverse proxy due to the multiple ports used for media transfers and the like, but for internal syncing it's awesome. The file management of SeaFile seems to work better too, as I can move folders from an "Active" to "Inactive" and it clears them off of my devices and vice-versa. If only I could get it working through a reverse proxy...!