[luisehk]

I wonder if this is really usable like Dropbox. I tried owncloud which is supposed to be the more stable alternative but it kept replacing new files with old ones, sync took ages and security was weak. I really want to support this kind of projects but they hold me from being productive, which I really need right now.

[kansface]

No, it won't be. Polling the filesystem is not a scalable solution. OsX will hit the file descriptor limit on mostly anything you want to watch. Of course, you can up the limit, but thats a losing battle because poling 10K files per second doesn't work.

The correct solution involves using FSEvents (which blows), and system poling when you get an event. Inotify is good enough to get away with no poling. The native windows change watcher isn't bad either.

Even if this weren't the case, the value that dropbox provides is far greater than this potential solution for most people- ie, there is quite a bit of room for something to go wrong running your own duct tape dropbox. Syncing 99/100 files is not OK. Syncing 100/100 files, but only after 2 weeks isn't OK either.

source: I built my own ducktape dropbox (sortof). https://github.com/Floobits/flegmatic

[Tho85]

The underlying sync software (Unison) has been around for years now and is regarded as stable. So syncing should work just fine, although you should keep a backup of your files just in case.

You can also use Dropbox and Encbox together if you're unsure: Point your Dropbox installation to ~/Encbox and have Dropbox sync your (then decrypted) files. So you can be sure to have backups, file sharing features, etc. and see if Encbox is stable enough for you.

[aw3c2]

I often have Unison not notice file changes until I repeatedly scan or sometimes even until weeks later. If I new a better alternative I would not use it.

[Tho85]

They use some kind of heuristic to make change detection faster, see their documentation: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/...

Maybe that's the root cause of your issues?

[Wilya]

Owncloud client is based on csync, which a quite weak system compared to unison, in terms of file consistency.

No idea how well unison performs in constant Dropbox-like usage, but you shouldn't let the flaws of Owncloud deter you: file synchronisation isn't Owncloud's strong point.