MEPIS Community Forum

I found that out too, annoying. So far I find it nowhere as convenient as Dropbox, but maybe it is therefore more secure?

I installed the Debian (Non-Current) 64-bit Intel/AMD ( spideroak_9830_amd64.deb ) version and the installation went flawlessly.

Being lazy, I didn't want to leave my Mepis11 partition to check on the synching with my other partitions.

I did however create a Share Room and was able to access the data from a browser.

According to this: https://spideroak.com/engineering_matters#true_privacy

it's absolutely more secure. The files are encrypted on your computer using your password. Dropbox uploads the files in "plaintext", then re-encrypts them on their end, but reserves the option to "share" them with those in authority.

Check out http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-308.txt, (save as txt file, start reading about line 66.)

Encryption is our friend
Damn legalese

Thanks for the links both of you

or search ( find ) the browser page for "Yup. I'm glad you're going to cover this Dropbox thing because I didn't"

Just installed SpiderOak at a machine with SM 11 32 bit. Install was easy (spideroak_9830_i386.deb), maybe a fat package, due to the encryption libraries.
At the moment it works OK. For subscribers it is cheaper (100 GB instead of 50GB from Dropbox for your 10 bucks).

For online backup it seems to be fine. I tried creating a folder to share with my daughter in another state. That feature does not seem to work. It creates the folder but none of the information is sent with the link it creates - no files, folder name, nothing. There were comments on the spideroak forum - others were finding that it did not work.

I still find Spideroak very clunky and slow in operation, but it seems to do everything it claims. I have had to jump through a few hoops in getting Sync to work, but it does work now. I've also created a share folder which is accessible on my second machine (which doesn't have Spideroak installed). Try this link https://spideroak.com/browse/share/PJH/Birds11

It should give you a folder called 'webpics' containing 2 small jpegs. As far as I can see, you have to download the files you choose - there's no view function. Let me know if this works.

I don't find these functions very intuitive and I think this is because they are bolt-ons to the main online backup function. Share only seems to work as a broadcast function, ie one-way; you make available files or folders for anyone who has the link to download. Sync requires that Spideroak on the other machine is set up with a folder of the same name which has already been backed up on that machine, even if it is empty.

Automatic synching works between my 2 machines, and also between my Mepis and XP installations. I haven't yet moved to autostarting Spideroak, so I have to remember to start it each time. I still want to explore the functions before committing to it.

BTW, the backup/upload process for those 2 jpegs took almost 3 minutes.

Phil

Thanks, everybody, but it's over. I sent a digest of our testing to Warren, and got this back:Good work, Community!

I did more tests about cloud backup services, as SpiderOak and Wuala on my main computer (AMD 9650 2,4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, SM 11-32).

My conclusions so far are:

- As said before, installation of SpiderOak client was fine using "current" Debian 32 bit. Wuala client uses Java (=> ver1.6) but looks well and has localisation in several languages.
- When SpiderOak starts encrypting/compressing, there is a peak of CPU load, but only makes use of one core. Then the load decreases and remains about 1%.
- Use of RAM by SpiderOak is quite low: about 1 - 1,6 % in my case.
- The upload speed of SpiderOak can be adjusted to your likes, so it does not interferes with usual web browsing or email. Download speed is negligible.
- The very first backup takes a lot of time in my case (several GB); this was due to my ISP provider: 10 Gb/s d/l, but only 600 kb/s upload.
- Further backups (automatic, in background) are almost unnoticeable: they upload only the difference of data.
- Dropbox can backup only one directory, that can due to a duplication of data (putting data from different places on a new directory).
- SpiderOak and Wuala lets you choose different combinations of directories.
- These are waaay safer than Dropbox: data is encrypted locally and the provider does not knows your password. All they store are chunks of encrypted data in different places.
- Dropbox is very elementary, but easier to handle by everyone, newbies included.
- SO and Wuala have much more options, but the tabbed menus and manuals are clear enough.
- Dropbox had the data of some customers wide open during hours sometime ago.
- All them let you have a free account of about 2 GB.
- Paid fares are lower in SpiderOak or Wuala than in Dropbox.

Please, if some of you have good/bad experiences with cloud backup/sync providers and like to share it with everybody else, that could be useful for all use in these days.