I have just noticed, that Asus have provided me with my Eee PC 901 also a service called Eee Storage. It means 20 Gb storage on somewhere on a web based file server where I can keep my files and access from anywhere when I have internet connection. The idea is not new nor unknown for me. I have accounts for Box.net and also Dropbox services. I like both of them, since they have their own unique value. I like Box.net because they integrate seamlessly with other web 2.0 programs like Zoho or Facebook. And the best is that they provide accessibility also via webdav, so I can access my files directly from konqueror or any other file manager with webdav support.
I also like Dropbox. They give a client program available for Windows, Mac a Linux. The client connects to the internet storage and syncronizes a directory on the local hard disk and the file server. It means that I can work also offline, and the changes in the directory content is synced whenever next time I have a connection to the net. I enjoy most their directory sharing feature. We have created a shared folder with my father, so when I want to send him files, e.g. our latest family pictures or videos, I just copy them to this local folder, and after a while he can use them also.
So this is my experiences with online storage when Eee Storage came into the picture. I have realized this service just a few days ago, and I have tried yesterday. The size of the storage (20 Gb) is impressive compared to the free Box.net or DropBox capabilities. There is a built in client feature in the default file manager of my Eee PC which is produced by Xandros. Unfortunately I prefer to use Konqueror, but since the access method to the storage is not public (or I haven't found yet), I cannot setup it. The access with the default file manager is intolerably slow. During the first connection it sets up the account for me in the Eee Storage server without further notification. Unfortunately if I want to use the web interface, I have to make further steps to get the user name and password for it. The help in the FAQ of the service is misleading, I do not have the required 16 digits code on the manual of my gear nor the specified directories where I am supposed to do the setups automatically. Instead I have found a shell script in the Eee Storage/Web Storage directory called Account Setup.sh. Clicking on it I was able to provide the user name, password and email address what I wanted to use with my account. So this is not very mature, I have expected more from Asus. Not to speak that after the registration the service have sent me an email in which my user name and password is stated in plain text. I hate this kind of insecure solutions. Finally I was really disappointed with the speed of this service, so I have decided to go back to the other two solutions.
I quickly decided that Dropbox is not an option this time, because I do not want to give local hard drive space for the offline working. Instead I will use my Box.net storage mounted locally with webdav filesystem.
For this I have installed wdfs (and the dependent libneon26 package) as explained here. After that I was able to mount and umount manually the Box.net storage place. To make life easy, I have created two scripts for the task:
mountbox
wdfs http://www.box.net/dav '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet' -u 'my.email@for.box.net' -p secret_passwd
umountbox
fusermount -u '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet'
I have created the target dir:
mkdir '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet'
And I have put the two scripts into the /home/user/bin directory. After chmod u+x *mountbox in that dir the scripts are working like a dream. The service is not particularly quick, but not bad. I can mount, umount the directory, move or copy files from any file manager, or even better, from command line. And that is it. Maybe when I will be out of storage, I will also use Eee Storage.
I also like Dropbox. They give a client program available for Windows, Mac a Linux. The client connects to the internet storage and syncronizes a directory on the local hard disk and the file server. It means that I can work also offline, and the changes in the directory content is synced whenever next time I have a connection to the net. I enjoy most their directory sharing feature. We have created a shared folder with my father, so when I want to send him files, e.g. our latest family pictures or videos, I just copy them to this local folder, and after a while he can use them also.
So this is my experiences with online storage when Eee Storage came into the picture. I have realized this service just a few days ago, and I have tried yesterday. The size of the storage (20 Gb) is impressive compared to the free Box.net or DropBox capabilities. There is a built in client feature in the default file manager of my Eee PC which is produced by Xandros. Unfortunately I prefer to use Konqueror, but since the access method to the storage is not public (or I haven't found yet), I cannot setup it. The access with the default file manager is intolerably slow. During the first connection it sets up the account for me in the Eee Storage server without further notification. Unfortunately if I want to use the web interface, I have to make further steps to get the user name and password for it. The help in the FAQ of the service is misleading, I do not have the required 16 digits code on the manual of my gear nor the specified directories where I am supposed to do the setups automatically. Instead I have found a shell script in the Eee Storage/Web Storage directory called Account Setup.sh. Clicking on it I was able to provide the user name, password and email address what I wanted to use with my account. So this is not very mature, I have expected more from Asus. Not to speak that after the registration the service have sent me an email in which my user name and password is stated in plain text. I hate this kind of insecure solutions. Finally I was really disappointed with the speed of this service, so I have decided to go back to the other two solutions.
I quickly decided that Dropbox is not an option this time, because I do not want to give local hard drive space for the offline working. Instead I will use my Box.net storage mounted locally with webdav filesystem.
For this I have installed wdfs (and the dependent libneon26 package) as explained here. After that I was able to mount and umount manually the Box.net storage place. To make life easy, I have created two scripts for the task:
mountbox
wdfs http://www.box.net/dav '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet' -u 'my.email@for.box.net' -p secret_passwd
umountbox
fusermount -u '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet'
I have created the target dir:
mkdir '/home/user/My Documents/Boxnet'
And I have put the two scripts into the /home/user/bin directory. After chmod u+x *mountbox in that dir the scripts are working like a dream. The service is not particularly quick, but not bad. I can mount, umount the directory, move or copy files from any file manager, or even better, from command line. And that is it. Maybe when I will be out of storage, I will also use Eee Storage.
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