How the hell do you use AeroFS?

[Lean L]

I recently happened upon AeroFS. This seems like a great idea and is supposed to be self hosted dropbox with the added ability to sync files p2p. I installed the team server, the android app, and the desktop app.

Nothing makes any sense to me. I am missing the ability to add a sync folder from windows, there is no configuration available for the team server, I can’t seem to do anything besides look at the existing files on the android app, and I have no idea how to invite anyone to my share.

Is this tool missing some basic functionality? Is it so intuitive that I am completely overlooking everything? User error or is this just that basic?

 

[Linux23]

they use it here at work. i'm too lazy to get involved with how to support the 100,000 th product this company uses. 😛

 

[Gooberlx2]

What's the difference between that and other options like owncloud and/or bitorrent sync?

 

[Lean L]

I would love to use owncloud but if you actually seriously use it, it generates a billion conflict files.

This seems to be the best solution for my needs if I can get it to actually work.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I guess I haven't really experienced that. I run an owncloud via freenas and it seems to work just fine, but then I only host for my own use. I don't have thousands of files for dozens of users or anything like that. I don't know how heavy your utilization requirements are.

 

[Lean L]

I don't have many users. I used it once in the past to sync pictures and my documents. They were small files but the added up to thousands. It was conflict file central as it created conflict files then conflict files for those conflict files... It was an utter mess.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I don't have many users. I used it once in the past to sync pictures and my documents. They were small files but the added up to thousands. It was conflict file central as it created conflict files then conflict files for those conflict files... It was an utter mess.

Yuck, that sucks. Was it an older version or perhaps something was running that would quickly make multiple small changes to the files before the systems could sync?

 

[mpillar]

Hey folks, AeroFS software engineer here. Happy to answer any questions about the product.

Some context: AeroFS is an enterprise file sharing and collaboration platform. We have two deployment options, hybrid cloud (hosted authentication, on-prem file storage) and private cloud (on-prem everything). Our free/at-home users typically use our hybrid cloud offering which you can sign up for on aerofs.com.

When you install our desktop app all your files in the AeroFS folder (typically auto-created in your documents folder) will be synced automatically between your devices. Our mobile app (we support iOS and Android) will connect directly to your desktop apps and they will act as a file server. We never store your files on our servers. The Team Server can be installed for added availability, and will sync all files for everyone in your AeroFS organization.

To share content with other AeroFS users, you can use our shell extension on Win & Mac (right click on the folder you want to share) of you can share by clicking on the AeroFS tray icon and going to "Manage Shared Folders". Our support site has details.

I'm sorry that you missed these features on your first pass. We strive to build both usable and secure software, and it's a bummer these features were not obvious. If you have any feedback I'd love to hear it, feel free to shoot me an email at matt [at] aerofs [dot] com.

 

[Lean L]

Yuck, that sucks. Was it an older version or perhaps something was running that would quickly make multiple small changes to the files before the systems could sync?

I never figured it out but it was a while ago. With no official bug reports or reference of it on the product release log, I will not be trying owncloud again.

Thanks for the reply mpillar but I already switched off AeroFS. The idea is good but it's missing two critical components.

Automatic Photo sync (The android app does nothing besides show existing files. There's no real sync of anything there.)
The shell extension never showed up for me in the couple instances of of Windows that I installed this on.

It was also very annoying that network drives cannot be synced. The error message says something along the lines of 'remote ntfs not supported on windows 2008 r2', which honestly didn't make sense since nothing was ntfs on that share, but okay... maybe it's a windows client limitation.. I installed it on a different ubuntu server and now the error message says cifs not supported on linux...

I think that's a rather circular way of phrasing error messages.

I found something that is completely self hosted (No account association) and serves my needs. I'll be using syncthing. It just works once it is set up. As for sharing anything.. I'll just sym link stuff in my htdocs or something.