I've opened this as an issue on AMSBM2 pages on gitHub; But as there doesn't seem to be much activity there, I'm wondering if anyone here has a clue.
There are problems with files containing certain latin characters, such as í, ì, ñ…; etc.
The files are listed with these characters correctly using AMSBM2, they appear in Windows File explorer and other OS's when shared. So I can only think it is a problem with AMSBM2. When these characters are present AMSBM2 cannot extract data from the files, copy, download or move them.
This is a very common situation with music files, unless the user's Music lib consists of only "Anglo Saxon" music, for example. So it's a serious limitation.
Going to be working with a medium sized remote group on a large (but independent) project that will be generating many GB to TB of data.
To keep users from having to store 500GB of data on their personal machines, and to keep everyone in sync, we need a command-line/python utility to control selective syncing of dependencies on multiple operating systems: or at least osx and linux.
So example, someone who needs to work on the folder:
startrek/startrekiii
May require the folders:
startrek/nimoy/common
startrek/nimoy/[user]
startrek/shatner/common
startrek/shatner/[user]
but not:
startrek/startrekii, startrek/nimoy/[some_other_user], etc
From their command line (or a UI) they would run:
sync startrekiii
And they'd also receive startrek/nimoy/common, etc
likewise we'll have an unsync command that, as long as those dependent folders are not in use by another sync, will be unsynced and removed from the user's HD.
Of cloud sync/storage solutions, dropbox seems to offer the most granular control over this, allowing you to sync specific folders and subfolders - however from everything I can find this granular control is strictly limited to their UI.
We're completely open to alternative solutions if you have them, we just need something as easily deployable as possible and don't have the budget for Aspera or something to that effect.
Two other important notes:
Because of one very central part of our pipeline which pulls files
from those dependent folders (over which we have limited API
control), the paths need to be consistent on their respective
platform. So ~/Dropbox/startrek/nimoy can never be ~/Dropbox/startrek/startrekiii/nimoy
Many of the people using this will be artists and otherwise non-technical people, the extent of who's experience using csh or bash is for simple things like changing directories and moving files around.
Has anyone found a way to hack into Dropbox's selective sync, and/or know of a better alternative?
My parents got two shiny new iMac's (2015, 27") for Christmas, and for the first time ever they have separate computers. The problem is, they want everything between them to be the same. For now, I've copied both Desktop and Documents folders from the old computer (the only folders they really used), amounting to about 70GB of stuff. The problem is keeping things synced after I leave to head back to school.
Dropbox, SugarSync, SkyDrive, etc are out, as the amount of data is way past their limits, and privacy issues are there.
I was thinking of doing rsync in a cron job, to mimic how something like SyncBack Free may do this, but am very open to suggestions. Ideally, there would be two way synchronization, with most recent edits being written to the computer with the older version.
What would such a script look like? Can it be done for free?
In most of the games and programs you download, you just get the installer.
Some .exe files can be ran straightly, though (it's probably cause they don't have much source files to extract, huh?).
I was wondering, what's the difference between an installer, that just extracts the files, and a zip (rar, iso..) file, that you could download ,just depending on your internet speed, in up to few seconds. And where does a, maybe 200mb, installer fetch the, let's say 5gb of, files, offline?
I've never heard about this, and I'm learning to program, so I'd appreciate if you could answer me properly.
What you're really asking is:
How does an installer work?
A bit of background.
In the Before Times, man did not have such things as "installers." Software was run directly off of floppy disks (and none of that rigid 3.5" crap, I'm talking disks that flopped), like God intended.
Then came the first home computers with persistent hard drives. For the first time, it made sense to copy a program off a disk and have it stick around.
But programs still worked the way "portable" applications do today: you copied them as-is and ran them as-is.
Then operating systems began to get more complicated.
Windows introduced this notion of a registry: a central location where program and operating system configuration could be stored. Software authors began using this registry. Its arcane architecture and user-hostile editing utility (the infamous regedit.exe) made it the perfect place to store shareware information -- how many days you have left on your trial, for example.
This happened around the same time that programs began to be too large to fit -- uncompressed -- on a single floppy disk. A way was needed to split a program onto multiple disks. Since it wasn't very user-friendly to require the user to have e.g. a ZIP extractor installed (remember, this was before ubiquitous Internet), Windows programs began to be shipped with installers. You can think of these as basically portable versions of WinZIP whose sole purpose was to reassemble and extract a compressed file.
These days, installers serve a number of other purposes:
providing a convenient user interface
prompting the user to accept a click-through end-user license agreement (EULA)
prompting the user for CD keys (though this is being phased out for many systems in favor of digital distribution)
asking the user to register their software
and so on. They may also serve as DRM vehicles, validating CDs and decrypting data to prevent villainous individuals (yarr) from brrreakin' ye olde DMCA.
At their heart, they aren't any more complex than in the Windows 95 days -- a glorified unzip program.
Sidenote: Where does the installer get 5GB of data from 200MB of archives if not the Internet?
That's high, though there are plenty of ways you could get that compression ratio. Imagine a complex game whose world is defined in verbose XML -- that's readily compressible. You could even get that back in the old WinZIP days.
A zip file can only hold some files and then you unzip and get those files as is.
An installer however can be a very complicated program. It can create the needed files or folders structures, It can register the required dlls on your system, give you the options of the features that can be installed, Check your system for the compatibility and also be used as a wizard to guide you, step by step, to custom install you application.
An Installer (esp. Windows Installer) can make automatic Registry entries, as well as unpack and write files to a directory. With the Zip, you have to manually extract the files, and get no automatic registry edits.
The advantage to a zip is that it guarantees (most of the time) that the application is portable, that all necessary files are included in the unzipped directory.
The advantage of an installer is pretty obvious: automated, UI.
As for the 200mb -> 5gb....compressing the files into an exe can add another layer of more/better/smaller compression than that of just simply throwing the files into a zipped folder, however 200mb -> 5gb is a pretty big jump, not impossible, just pretty big. For most installers that do have instructions for large external (online) downloads, they typically let you know before hand that they are about to download a large chunk of data and to not disconnect from the internet during install....
An Installer or EXE Can Be Easily Get Affected By Virus But if there is ZIP archive than there are less chances for virus affection and using zip is more flexible too because it can be protected using you own password too.
Another Normal Benefit is that ZIP compress the files too.
Hope You are getting me.
I am currently working on a CRM application. The application is meant for multiple users, so I need a suitable folder to store things like documents, notes and most importantly the database. This folder should be shared across all users and over network as well.
After searching online it seemed this folder is recommended: "C:\Users\Public\Public Documents". However, this seems like a rather 'hard to find' folder for our customers, who are for the most part little to no experience with computers.
Our non-programmer suggested simply using "C:\CRM\", since it is very easy to find even for new users (and unlikely to be forgotten during a backup!)
I've been trying to find out what the (technical) ups and downs about these two folders are, but I'm finding it hard to get a clear answer. So bassicaly my question is:
Can anyone explain to me why I shouldn't use "C:\CRM\", but I should use "C:\Users\Public\Public"? And what problems I could run into when I do use "C:\CRM\"?
Thanks in advance!