Chromebooks and self hosted cloud storage

[Tim Watts]

I am giving serious credence to getting chromebooks for the kids schooling (and other) wibblings.

The world has moved past hardwired machines and NFS servers and semi-disconnected is the way forward and in many ways I am impressed with the ideas behind chromebooks. The lower maintenance (ie my time) is attractive.

However, 2 sticking points:

1) Don't like relying on Google, dropbox etc for storage. Must be able to self host a cloud off my existing vast servers that are full of photos, music and important documents.

Anyone had any experience with any of the self hosted cloud software in:

or any others?

Obviously it has to run on linux and support disconnected use (selective offline mode for certain small file volumes, but not for massive volumes like my photos).

Seafile looks interesting...

2) For the times the kids want "proper" software like Gimp or Inkscape - what are the solutions? I see you can buy app-serving from external providers. But could a Chromebook run an X11 app off a local linux server, for example?

[Jonathan]

My son died recently and trying to get access to his dropbox account involves. sending documents to lawyers in California. So think about the digital legacy,

Jonathan

[stuart noble]

My nine year old grandson has been issued with one by the school. It's the (non-Apple) future I suppose

[charles]

over a year ago, my wife went to baby-sit our grandchildren. The eight year old was doing her homework - creating a PowerPoint presntation. With this she was being helped by her 10 year old brother.

[Tim Watts]

It seems there needs to be a concerted effort into developing a new networked filesystem based on common and open protocol:

In short, works like Drive or Dropbox.

Optimised for semi connected operation (unlike NFS) and bombproof with respect to being locally cached (offline mode).

[Dave Liquorice]

So you are only looking at file sync, not contacts and calendars?

I'm playing with SOGo as a contacts/calendar sync system. It should be able to sync with Windows but I haven't jumped through those hoops yet. It works "out of the box" via CalDAV and CardDAV to Android devices (and presumably iOS).

Personally I don't like the google apps online stuff a) if you don't have a 'net connection you are stuffed fullstop. b) if you do have net connection pulling everything down before you can work on it is slow c) the apps themselves are reinventing the wheel and are at the ox cart level.

[Bobbie Sellers]

Those are old ideas dressed up in shiny Chrome. I rejected the concepts at every point back in the day when the server providing apps was supposed to be closer at hands. That was when servers were still called servers and rack upon rack of server was called sever farms not clouds. The devices used were disk-less terminals and the original use was because they had few microprocessors and big main frames served applications to students in Universities. When these were the only game in town they were interesting. When personal computers were developed we found that they were faster and more usable than disk-less terminals and it was goodbye to the terminals except in certain specialized uses.

For a few dollars more the proper sort of personal computer running Linux could be had for each child.

bliss

[Tim Watts]

Yes. I'm happy with Google doing those as:

1) They do it really rather well; 2) It is low volume and non critical data - ie I value it a great deal less than my kids' photos.

Fair point.

I have another driving factor - the kids' school is encouraging Chromebooks. Not that that is a be all and end all - but it is a factor...

In the "old days" I ran a nice setup with desktops and NFS - but those days are over. I think, for their faults, Chromebooks are onto something

- though it needs work...

[Tim Watts]

Well, yes.

But how do you handle the "moving around" factor?

I hate to say it - but linux needs MS DFS - a semi connected network filesystem with graceful offline operation.

It does not have it.

No, I am not an MS fanboi - rather the opposite - but DFS is actually quite nice.

[John Hasler]

AFS doesn't qualify?

[Bobbie Sellers]

Not sure what you are meaning but I have been using Linux notebooks for years. I connect them via USB to my archival disks. Up to USB 3.0 now with my latest notebook update.

Well we have NFS and a connectivity stacks. So what you are you requiring from the top down administration controlled MS DFS? I ask because other people, with your problem stated clearly, may be able to provide solutions. There are plenty of cloud solutions and server software in Linux but you sound as though you will need a clearer statement of your solution than a loner like myself could provide. You might want to check with Linux User Groups in your vicinity which you can usually find by searching on same with your region in the search term.

Best of luck.

bliss

[Tim Watts]

Well, the clear statement of need is:

Moving a client device (or several) around with intermittent (say 80%) Internet connectivity whilst having access to files which are ultimately mastered on a central server and can be backed up from there.

We accept files may not be available when net connectivity is non existent, but those that are (cached) should be handled gracefully and replicated correctly.

That's about it...

[Richard Kettlewell]

Personally: push the question up a layer by sticking everything that I want to be available everywhere in git, and sync when opportunities arise.

Doubtless this works better for some use cases than others.

[Tim Watts]

I would say that's a non starter unless the sync is automatic.

[Tim Watts]

But it is an interesting idea for small files.

Not sure about large binaries though...

[Huge]

Good luck with that.

(What about AFS?)

[Tim Watts]

I should clarify - could work for me - but will not work for my kids who will never be "bothered".

Until they lose their files...

[Tim Watts]

I'm not sure - I have heard of it but never seen it in use.

Does it in practise support intermittent connectivity with strong local caching?

[Tim Watts]

You're the second to mention that - have you used it? Only first hand opinions are worth a lot :)

[dennis]

I looked at it and decided it was a lot of hassle to set it up but I didn't actually have a reason to do so. It looks quite useful but I don't recall it having support for chrome when I looked.

I am not even sure the prerequisites like kerberos are supported.