On 04/03/15 23:47, Theo Markettos wrote:
In uk.d-i-y Tim Watts wrote:
On 04/03/15 19:13, Dennis@home wrote:
On 04/03/2015 18:55, Tim Watts wrote:

Unless you know of an file manager app that does on the fly encryption?

https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/onedrive

Wow. Was not expecting that.

That is actually a potentially serious nutcracker there.

Thank you.

If not my entire media collection, that could be a good contender for
shared documents (finances, etc).

As I see it there are two parts to the problem: storage and syncing.

Storage is covered by the NAS. That's the master copy, everything should
migrate there. You can nuke all the other copies in the world and you'll
only lose the most recent changes. You can do a bulk download
quite easily over gigabit ethernet/wifi/USB/SATA.

Tools like Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox aren't a good idea for the
master copy: they're small and they're at the wrong end of the internet.
They're also vulnerable to 'ransom risks': if they announce pricing for next
month will be $500pm, what do you do?

+1 to that...

Another risk is site failu fotopic.net went under and it turned out the
bandwidth bill for sucking all the photos off it was beyond the means of the
company that had just called in the receiver because they had no money.
Likewise Code Spaces got hacked and the attacker just deleted all their
files - there was nothing left. The message from this is that if a cloud
provider goes under, it's simply gone, you don't get your data back.

And whilst Drive is *probably* not going away soon, Google have form for
randomly pulling projects at short notice and for selling stuff on.

However they could be useful for transit. For instance, git is a nice
protocol because every working copy contains a full copy of the history.
That means I don't care if github goes under - I have everything locally.
So github is simply a nice website for publishing the sources, and if github
went away it wouldn't be much effort to republish elsewhere.
If the files are encrypted you also don't need to worry about privacy
(though metadata is still an issue, and always the devil is in the key
management).

So I could see how something like this could work - Dropbox et al are just a
transit provider for sharing stuff back to base. This also means they're a
commodity conduit - if Dropbox are charging £silly, just switch to OneDrive
(or whoever). The one thing I don't see this doing is sending a request to
the NAS saying 'please put file XXX in Dropbox so I can see it' - maybe
there's a way round that. Or maybe you just say 'you can only view the
photos when you're at home'.

It would be fun to sniff the conversation between Drive and my computer
- with a minimal client so I don't see all the web supporting stuff.

I *wonder* if it is something that could be reverse engineered into a
home server...


On the wider philosophical question, I found it depressing to read of an app
for sending encrypted SMS where the developers are tightly wedded to the
Google Play infrastructure, while seemingly not realising the tensions
between these two directions:
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/127
As that thread demonstrates the issue is somewhat complicated, but I'm not
surprised that many mobile developers don't understand the risks.
(That app developer has softened their position somewhat in later posts)

Theo

In comp.os.linux.misc Tim Watts wrote:
On 04/03/15 23:47, Theo Markettos wrote:
However they could be useful for transit. For instance, git is a
nice protocol because every working copy contains a full copy of
the history. That means I don't care if github goes under - I have
everything locally. So github is simply a nice website for
publishing the sources, and if github went away it wouldn't be much
effort to republish elsewhere. If the files are encrypted you also
don't need to worry about privacy (though metadata is still an
issue, and always the devil is in the key management).

So I could see how something like this could work - Dropbox et al
are just a transit provider for sharing stuff back to base. This
also means they're a commodity conduit - if Dropbox are charging
£silly, just switch to OneDrive (or whoever). The one thing I
don't see this doing is sending a request to the NAS saying 'please
put file XXX in Dropbox so I can see it' - maybe there's a way
round that. Or maybe you just say 'you can only view the photos
when you're at home'.

It would be fun to sniff the conversation between Drive and my
- computer with a minimal client so I don't see all the web
- supporting stuff.

I *wonder* if it is something that could be reverse engineered into a
home server...

Another item that has not been mentioned yet is git annex:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/

Disclaimer, never used it. Also don't know how well it 'interfaces'
with android/chromebooks. Both of which, while running Free Software
Linux underneath the hood have much more in common with proprietary
software than Free Software. Note that on both, even though the
engine/transmission is Linux, ship in their default config with the
hood (bonnet) firmly locked down against end user modification.

Git annex's webpage description does talk about keeping sync in the
face of intermittent/mobile network connection.

In comp.os.linux.misc Tim Watts wrote:
It would be fun to sniff the conversation between Drive and my
- computer with a minimal client so I don't see all the web
- supporting stuff.

I *wonder* if it is something that could be reverse engineered into a
home server...

Another one that has not come up yet (at least that I recall):

Tahoe-LAFS https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Adding free software to a rented (virtual) server to make a global
cloud is not actually any cheaper than renting a bit of someone
elses cloud.

To be fair to the OP (Tim Watts) the issue seems not to be one of cost,
but rather of privacy and control.

Google make all this lovely free stuff available (at some cost to them,
in terms of development and hosting) so that we will be encouraged to
use their services and partake of their delicious advertising. shrug
it's a business model, and rather less obnoxious than some. One thing
that Google (and others like them) are NOT likely to do is to share
their IP so that we can all run lookalike ad-free servers for our own
convenience.

Pity, I'd love to be able to use software as nice as Google Docs from a
private cloud so that my data wasn't on Google's servers (or, indeed,
and servers outside my own country of residence).

If its domestic file sharing you want, stuff a domestic files
server in.

That does, indeed, work fairly well ... though that it takes a little
more effort to make it safely available remotely (VPN).

The problem here is the Chromebook, which won't talk CIFS. It's easy
enough to put files on a local server (Apache, whatever) and access
them from the browser on a Chromebook, but some server-side cloudiness
is needed to make it possible to upload them back to the server
afterwards, and it won't be as transparent as using Google Docs on
Google Drive.

I would have thought something like OwnCloud would provide that,
though? (OK, I note the OP's issue with the number of shares OwnCloud
Free allows.)
--
Cheers,
Daniel.

In article , Tim Watts wrote:
Very interesting thread, BTW - I have exactly the same problems...

Thank you - I am surprised it's only the two of us though. Perhaps
others are less picky?

No, no, I'm interested in the same thing. Just a bit less vociferous in
my disappointment at not finding anything ready-made.

It's not -- I hasten to add -- that I feel any entitlement to a
ready-made Open Source solution to the problem ... just that there is
so much goos OS software out there that frankly I'm surprised NOT to
find one.

Maybe all the good developers with an interest in this sort of thing
already work for Google ...
--
Cheers,
Daniel.

The problem here is the Chromebook, which won't talk CIFS. It's easy
enough to put files on a local server (Apache, whatever) and access
them from the browser on a Chromebook, but some server-side cloudiness
is needed to make it possible to upload them back to the server
afterwards, and it won't be as transparent as using Google Docs on
Google Drive.

A Chromebook is not a computer: Its a stripped down access device to
GoogleCloud.

And Google will actively prevent it accessing anything else as well as that.



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

In uk.comp.os.linux Tim Watts wrote:
It would be fun to sniff the conversation between Drive and my computer
- with a minimal client so I don't see all the web supporting stuff.

There are clients like:
https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse
https://github.com/iwonbigbro/gsync
https://www.jobnix.in/dropbox-comman...ce-cli-client/

I don't know of their maturity. Bolting on encryption is another
question.

However, even encrypted I don't think this is the full solution. Because
the model is that everything lives primarily in the cloud, whereas we're
using the cloud as simply a disposable cache of what we have locally. That
means they don't present the unified worldview of 'here are all the files
you can have, but some of them will take longer' that a remote FS would do.

Theo

In uk.comp.os.linux Rich wrote:
Another item that has not been mentioned yet is git annex:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/

I've been meaning to look at that for a while. It does seem interesting in
that it supports protocols like Google Drive for storing files. However, I
don't know if they're usable on Android/etc if encrypted - you just have a
pile of encrypted files and hashes.

There's an Android app:
http://git-annex.branchable.com/Android/
and a git-annex based FS (a bit old):
https://github.com/chmduquesne/sharebox-fs
but otherwise it seems like any encrypted system needs a client at the other
end, and that doesn't exist for all platforms.

Theo

On 05/03/15 10:04, Rich wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc Tim Watts wrote:
It would be fun to sniff the conversation between Drive and my
- computer with a minimal client so I don't see all the web
- supporting stuff.

I *wonder* if it is something that could be reverse engineered into a
home server...

Another one that has not come up yet (at least that I recall):

Tahoe-LAFS https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs


Oh - that does look interesting!

On 05/03/15 11:20, Daniel James wrote:

Maybe all the good developers with an interest in this sort of thing
already work for Google ...

Aye - could be.

I'd work for Google if they let me (I tried) Yiu should see their
London office!

On 05/03/15 11:20, Daniel James wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Adding free software to a rented (virtual) server to make a global
cloud is not actually any cheaper than renting a bit of someone
elses cloud.

To be fair to the OP (Tim Watts) the issue seems not to be one of cost,
but rather of privacy and control.

In a nutshell. I'd pay a reasonable amount for owning a copy of
something like Google Drive for my own servers. But not $9000!!!

I'm mostly opensource, but I do pay for a few apps quite happily.

Google make all this lovely free stuff available (at some cost to them,
in terms of development and hosting) so that we will be encouraged to
use their services and partake of their delicious advertising. shrug
it's a business model, and rather less obnoxious than some. One thing
that Google (and others like them) are NOT likely to do is to share
their IP so that we can all run lookalike ad-free servers for our own
convenience.

Pity, I'd love to be able to use software as nice as Google Docs from a
private cloud so that my data wasn't on Google's servers (or, indeed,
and servers outside my own country of residence).

Totally...

But as you say, Google's main income is advertising, not selling
software - or even services (though they do do the latter).

If its domestic file sharing you want, stuff a domestic files
server in.

That does, indeed, work fairly well ... though that it takes a little
more effort to make it safely available remotely (VPN).

The problem here is the Chromebook, which won't talk CIFS. It's easy
enough to put files on a local server (Apache, whatever) and access
them from the browser on a Chromebook, but some server-side cloudiness
is needed to make it possible to upload them back to the server
afterwards, and it won't be as transparent as using Google Docs on
Google Drive.

I would have thought something like OwnCloud would provide that,
though? (OK, I note the OP's issue with the number of shares OwnCloud
Free allows.)


It did occur to me I could run multiple instances of OwnCloud, one per
share - but it's a bodge...

In uk.d-i-y Tim Watts wrote:
On 05/03/15 10:04, Rich wrote:
Another one that has not come up yet (at least that I recall):

Tahoe-LAFS https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs


Oh - that does look interesting!

Just to make things more complicated, there's a Tahoe backend for git-annex
http://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/tahoe/

Theo
(time to lie down and recover from architecture diagram overload ;-)

On 05/03/15 09:53, Rich wrote:

Another item that has not been mentioned yet is git annex:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/

Hot-Damn - that is very very interesting - that demands a play...

Wow - thanks folks, turning up some cool stuff

On 05/03/2015 14:19, Tim Watts wrote:
On 05/03/15 09:53, Rich wrote:

Another item that has not been mentioned yet is git annex:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/

Hot-Damn - that is very very interesting - that demands a play...

Wow - thanks folks, turning up some cool stuff

It worries me when they make statements like..


"When Bob needs access to some files, git-annex can tell him which
drive(s) they're on, and easily make them available. Indeed, every drive
knows what is on every other drive."

Just how do the offline drives know what he has just done on the online
ones. Its not actually possible. The best they can do is sync them so
they know the current state is when you connect one online until then
some of the drives have no idea what is on the others.

On 2015-03-04, Tim Watts wrote:
On 04/03/15 14:53, Robert Heller wrote:
At Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:32:04 +0000 Tim Watts wrote:


It is a specialist network filesystem - that is for sure. It strikes me
as strange that there are 101 commercial suppliers (Dropbox, Google,
Evernote, Spideroak...) and yet no one has come up with a nice well
defined open protocol that addresses replication and syncing.

snip for brev



Check out git-annex assistant

http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/

On 05/03/2015 19:27, Dennis@home wrote:
On 05/03/2015 14:19, Tim Watts wrote:
On 05/03/15 09:53, Rich wrote:

Another item that has not been mentioned yet is git annex:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/

Hot-Damn - that is very very interesting - that demands a play...

Wow - thanks folks, turning up some cool stuff

It worries me when they make statements like..


"When Bob needs access to some files, git-annex can tell him which
drive(s) they're on, and easily make them available. Indeed, every drive
knows what is on every other drive."

Just how do the offline drives know what he has just done on the online
ones. Its not actually possible. The best they can do is sync them so
they know the current state is when you connect one online until then
some of the drives have no idea what is on the others.

Don't be daft. Where does it mention 'offline' drives? It's Bob that
wants to know where various files are, not the drives.

Tim Watts wrote:

I have raised this before... And tried some stuff. And I cannot believe
there is no solution... hence the first part of the subject.


The problem: "How do I make an existing linux file server be a private
cloud file server, targeting other linux, ChromeBooks and Android
clients?"


There is a LOT of stuff that misses out of critical features - or those
features need a paid-for version that costs $1700-9000 per year.

I've played with Tonido and OwnCloud so far.

Obvious omissions in the free versions:

a Limited shares (OwnCloud only seems to support 1 exported directory -
I have lots);

b (Serious) Do not integrate with POSIX users. The idea is the file
sharing should integrate with linux, not try and take over.


I did look at OpenAFS but there's no Android client.


SFTP so far offers the simplest solution but I can find no nice clients
that offer local copies (caching) so it is still somewhat half arsed.
And i suspect the basic nature of the protocol is it would be hard work
to make caching multiple client copies work.

Run rsync in a cron job?


OK - allowing for the fact that "I could write it myself dammit"
(actually, no, I don't have that type of coding skill) I'm very
surprised such a killer app is missing from the opensource stable.

Use puppet - it does all that and more.

I copped out and did my own using gambas.
It took me about 3 days to write scripts that do
do file copying automatically across continents with ssh,
email log files with sendemail, etc etc etc.



This is the same opensource that brought us *BSD, Linux, perl, python, 2
super RDBMSs, top rate image editing, rock solid *connected*
fileservices (NFS, SMB) allowing for the fact the latter had to be
reverse engineered.

Have all the creative types died?

Nothing ever dies in open source, and if it does, there is usually
a patch for it available in 24 hours.
What is happening is that all commonly requested wants have been satisfied
and thus topics go quiet. So you need to get out and ask.

On 05/03/15 22:46, 7 wrote:

Use puppet - it does all that and more.

I copped out and did my own using gambas.
It took me about 3 days to write scripts that do
do file copying automatically across continents with ssh,
email log files with sendemail, etc etc etc.

I'm afraid this doesn't fit what I'm after - which is a proper network
filesystem that is suited to android and chromebook clients

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...
On 04/03/15 19:51, Dan Espen wrote:


Huh?

What exactly are you trying to protect? Are your kids especially ugly?

I've taken plenty of pictures of people in the water.
I don't see the issue.



It's not a big surprise, someone not trusting external cloud providers.
Have you not seem the amount of pics hacked off various photo sharing
sites that the user really did not want to have in the public domain?

So it's not something I need to defend really - I just don't want all my
personal stuff on someone else's servers. I have no problem with using
Google Calendar because I never have anything that interesting in there.
But if I were running an innovative company and used it to store all sorts
if meetings with interesting people, then I would think twice.

Sort of ends up being much more secure on your own servers - they are not
even that expensive anymore, and there is much much less likelyhood of
getting your pics ripped off and other private things - !

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2015-03-10, John F wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...

On 04/03/15 19:51, Dan Espen wrote:

Huh?

What exactly are you trying to protect? Are your kids especially ugly?

I've taken plenty of pictures of people in the water.
I don't see the issue.

It's not a big surprise, someone not trusting external cloud providers.
Have you not seem the amount of pics hacked off various photo sharing
sites that the user really did not want to have in the public domain?

So it's not something I need to defend really - I just don't want all my
personal stuff on someone else's servers. I have no problem with using
Google Calendar because I never have anything that interesting in there.
But if I were running an innovative company and used it to store all sorts
if meetings with interesting people, then I would think twice.

Sort of ends up being much more secure on your own servers - they are not
even that expensive anymore, and there is much much less likelyhood of
getting your pics ripped off and other private things - !

And once you've backed everything up on an external drive, once you unplug
that drive, _nobody_ can touch it.

A friend recently lost a lot of valuable photos due to Cloud failure.
Even if there's no malice involved, **** happens.

--
/~\ lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

At 11 Mar 2015 17:45:37 GMT Charlie Gibbs wrote:


["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2015-03-10, John F wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...

On 04/03/15 19:51, Dan Espen wrote:

Huh?

What exactly are you trying to protect? Are your kids especially ugly?

I've taken plenty of pictures of people in the water.
I don't see the issue.

It's not a big surprise, someone not trusting external cloud providers.
Have you not seem the amount of pics hacked off various photo sharing
sites that the user really did not want to have in the public domain?

So it's not something I need to defend really - I just don't want all my
personal stuff on someone else's servers. I have no problem with using
Google Calendar because I never have anything that interesting in there.
But if I were running an innovative company and used it to store all sorts
if meetings with interesting people, then I would think twice.

Sort of ends up being much more secure on your own servers - they are not
even that expensive anymore, and there is much much less likelyhood of
getting your pics ripped off and other private things - !

And once you've backed everything up on an external drive, once you unplug
that drive, _nobody_ can touch it.

So long as you protect it from *physical* access. Eg. lock the drive in a
safe or something.


A friend recently lost a lot of valuable photos due to Cloud failure.
Even if there's no malice involved, **** happens.


--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services
-- Webhosting Services

"Robert Heller" wrote in message
...
At 11 Mar 2015 17:45:37 GMT Charlie Gibbs wrote:


["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2015-03-10, John F wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...

On 04/03/15 19:51, Dan Espen wrote:

Huh?

What exactly are you trying to protect? Are your kids especially
ugly?

I've taken plenty of pictures of people in the water.
I don't see the issue.

It's not a big surprise, someone not trusting external cloud
providers.
Have you not seem the amount of pics hacked off various photo sharing
sites that the user really did not want to have in the public domain?

So it's not something I need to defend really - I just don't want all
my
personal stuff on someone else's servers. I have no problem with using
Google Calendar because I never have anything that interesting in
there.
But if I were running an innovative company and used it to store all
sorts
if meetings with interesting people, then I would think twice.

Sort of ends up being much more secure on your own servers - they are
not
even that expensive anymore, and there is much much less likelyhood of
getting your pics ripped off and other private things - !

And once you've backed everything up on an external drive, once you
unplug
that drive, _nobody_ can touch it.

So long as you protect it from *physical* access. Eg. lock the drive in a
safe or something.


A friend recently lost a lot of valuable photos due to Cloud failure.
Even if there's no malice involved, **** happens.


--

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server - even if
the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with the
advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services nowadays

Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services
-- Webhosting Services

On 11/03/15 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server - even if
the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with the
advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services nowadays


Indeed.

But to be useful in today's world, it does need to be accessible to
devices - which brings me back to the original problem

On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:42:35 -0700, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put
it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server -
even if the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with
the advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services
nowadays

I'm involved with a not-for-profit which uses Dropbox reasonably heavily.
Data is backed-up automatically to DB, and then the DB account accessed
by several people around the country and, on occasion, internationally.

I see no ads, because I run adblockers on all my machines. I'm sure
others do likewise.

So what does it "cost" the organisation?

On 11/03/2015 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples
The disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk fails.
You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:22:13 +0000
"Dennis@home" wrote:

On 11/03/2015 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples
The disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk fails.
You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't think anyone
would be considering data security!

Also, conversely, if your data is stored remotely.

What if the country the server is in has change of government, a revolution, a
nuclear attack, a tsunami, earthquake, meteor strike, blah blah blah.

--
W J G

On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:14:13 +0000, Folderol wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to
put it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud
server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples The
disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk
fails. You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and
lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't think
anyone would be considering data security!

Failure of a single Tb HDD is hardly "armageddon scenario".

On 12/03/15 09:38, Huge wrote:
On 2015-03-11, John F wrote:

"Robert Heller" wrote in message
...
At 11 Mar 2015 17:45:37 GMT Charlie Gibbs wrote:

[45 lines snipped]

A friend recently lost a lot of valuable photos due to Cloud failure.
Even if there's no malice involved, **** happens.

My advice is never to store anything "in the cloud" unless you can afford
to have it stolen or lost.

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server - even if
the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with the
advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services nowadays

You don't even need the safe if you have somewhere "off site" to store the
disk - I keep mine in my locker at work.


Precisely. Fireproof is nuts. Two locations is all you need


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 12/03/15 08:22, Dennis@home wrote:
On 11/03/2015 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.

Why would anyone get a fireproof safe which wasn't waterproof?

The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples

Put the safe on the ground floor. Use an SSD.

The disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for paper and it costs a lot more for one that will
keep a disk safe.

Anything will break if it gets too hot. But it will last a lot longer than if it wasn't in a fireproof safe.

It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.

The weight does. My fireproof safe weighs 70Kg.

The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk fails.

No it won't,

You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and lose the data.

As you do with any backup, including copying to the cloud.


Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?


Not one of your stated reasons means it is not a good idea.

On 12/03/15 09:14, Folderol wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:22:13 +0000
"Dennis@home" wrote:

On 11/03/2015 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples
The disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk fails.
You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't think anyone
would be considering data security!

They probably ought to be - there's a lot of stored knowledge could be
used to reboot civilisation - unless we really want to jump back to the
18th century and work it all out the hard way...

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Precisely. Fireproof is nuts. Two locations is all you need

Fun to test, though, apparently:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12...e_214_on_fire/

Cheers,
Daniel.

On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:38:15 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2015-03-11, John F wrote:

"Robert Heller" wrote in message
...
At 11 Mar 2015 17:45:37 GMT Charlie Gibbs
wrote:

[45 lines snipped]

A friend recently lost a lot of valuable photos due to Cloud failure.
Even if there's no malice involved, **** happens.

My advice is never to store anything "in the cloud" unless you can
afford to have it stolen or lost.

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put
it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server -
even if the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with
the advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services
nowadays

You don't even need the safe if you have somewhere "off site" to store
the disk - I keep mine in my locker at work.

Get two backup disks and backup to them alternately. This way you always
have the previous backup in its offline storage no matter what happens,
even in the worst case: a massive power spike during a backup that fries
both the PC and the disk you were backing up to when it happened.

The really careful and/or paranoid will use a cycle of at least three
backup disks.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

In comp.os.linux.misc Martin Gregorie wrote:

The really careful and/or paranoid will use a cycle of at least three
backup disks.


I cycle 4 disks: 3 onsite and one offsite, but nothing to do with
paranoia. I use them as short-term archive also- not just backup. I've
never had a disk failure in 20+ years that needed a true backup ("knock
on wood", as they say) but at the same time I _have_ had multiple
occasions where it has been very useful to grab a file from a month or
two previously. This due to inadvertent deletion, or looking for
previous version of the file, etc. Hence 4 disks ranging from current to
several months old has served me very well for many years.

As you might intuit, I'm not about to turn over everything I have to
Apple or Google or the like, so run my own server and take care of my
own data.

Stan

On 12/03/15 09:42, Adrian wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:14:13 +0000, Folderol wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to
put it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud
server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples The
disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk
fails. You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and
lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't think
anyone would be considering data security!

Failure of a single Tb HDD is hardly "armageddon scenario".

On my server is routine - swap it out and then copy everything to it
from the mirror...


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2015-03-12, Tim Watts wrote:

On 12/03/15 09:14, Folderol wrote:

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't
think anyone would be considering data security!

They probably ought to be - there's a lot of stored knowledge could be
used to reboot civilisation - unless we really want to jump back to the
18th century and work it all out the hard way...

Even then, the process will be long and difficult. And it depends on the
stored knowledge being readable by whatever hardware remains! How many
people can read a 9-track tape these days?

Recommended reading: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller.

--
/~\ lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

On 2015-03-11, Tim Watts wrote:

On 11/03/15 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server - even if
the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with the
advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services nowadays

Indeed.

But to be useful in today's world, it does need to be accessible to
devices - which brings me back to the original problem

But at least if you have an offline backup (plus one or more offsite
copies to be really safe), you can get your data back in the event
of catastrophic failure, malware attacks, hostage situations, etc.

--
/~\ lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:42:35 -0700, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put
it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server -
even if the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with
the advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services
nowadays

I'm involved with a not-for-profit which uses Dropbox reasonably heavily.
Data is backed-up automatically to DB, and then the DB account accessed
by several people around the country and, on occasion, internationally.

I see no ads, because I run adblockers on all my machines. I'm sure
others do likewise.

So what does it "cost" the organisation?

It doesn't cost you anything - I use the same adblockers on my web browser
(at home) - I very rarely see any advertizing at all, but it's the principal
of the thing - if you didn't have any tracker blockers attached to your
browser, they'd (advertizers) be having a heyday, and nothing makes me more
furious than having my privacy invaded by some machine that thinks I want to
see advertizments that I have absolutely no interest in at all! If I want
something, I go and buy it - I don't wait for some advertizement to suggest
I need it or whatever - I actually don't use the web that much, more VPN and
usenet - so sick of the commercializm, I remember when we first started web
surfing back in the early 90's and it was so nice because it had no
advertizments - now that is all it is, why bother?

On 12/03/2015 09:14, Folderol wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:22:13 +0000
"Dennis@home" wrote:

On 11/03/2015 22:42, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put it in
for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server

As long as you know one hdd in a fireproof safe isn't a good backup.

The disk will break if the safe isn't waterproof.
The disk will break when the safe falls as the building crumples
The disk will break when the safe gets too hot as the fire rating is for
paper and it costs a lot more for one that will keep a disk safe.
It doesn't stop some scrote pinching your computer and the safe.
The disk will fail while copying the backup just as the main disk fails.
You copy any data errors caused by software to the backup and lose the data.

Do you want anymore reasons why its not a good idea?

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't think anyone
would be considering data security!

Also, conversely, if your data is stored remotely.

What if the country the server is in has change of government, a revolution, a
nuclear attack, a tsunami, earthquake, meteor strike, blah blah blah.


Then you will find a new one and backup to there instead.
If you and the backup are nuked then it either doesn't matter or you
fall back to another backup.

But as stated one backup hdd in a fire safe is not a good backup
whatever you say.

"Charlie Gibbs" wrote in message
...

On 2015-03-12, Tim Watts wrote:

On 12/03/15 09:14, Folderol wrote:

What a load of twaddle. If we're into Armageddon scenarios I don't
think anyone would be considering data security!

They probably ought to be - there's a lot of stored knowledge could be
used to reboot civilisation - unless we really want to jump back to the
18th century and work it all out the hard way...

Even then, the process will be long and difficult.

I've never been convinced about that.

And it depends on the
stored knowledge being readable by whatever hardware remains! How many
people can read a 9-track tape these days?

You don’t see the same problem with hard drives as the backup media.

Recommended reading: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller.

Just someone's scenario which isn't very plausible at all.

"John F" wrote in message
...
"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:42:35 -0700, John F wrote:

Exactly - and you can purchase a 1TB drive and a fireproof safe to put
it in for less than the cost of a years rental on a good cloud server -
even if the cloud server is free, it costs you in terms of dealing with
the advertizing and spyware etc delivered with all the public services
nowadays

I'm involved with a not-for-profit which uses Dropbox reasonably heavily.
Data is backed-up automatically to DB, and then the DB account accessed
by several people around the country and, on occasion, internationally.

I see no ads, because I run adblockers on all my machines. I'm sure
others do likewise.

So what does it "cost" the organisation?

It doesn't cost you anything - I use the same adblockers on my web browser
(at home) - I very rarely see any advertizing at all, but it's the
principal of the thing - if you didn't have any tracker blockers attached
to your browser, they'd (advertizers) be having a heyday, and nothing
makes me more furious than having my privacy invaded by some machine that
thinks I want to see advertizments that I have absolutely no interest in
at all! If I want something, I go and buy it - I don't wait for some
advertizement to suggest I need it or whatever - I actually don't use the
web that much, more VPN and usenet - so sick of the commercializm, I
remember when we first started web surfing back in the early 90's and it
was so nice because it had no advertizments - now that is all it is, why
bother?

Because it leaves all the other sources of information for dead convenience
wise.