Dropbox syncing works!
Andrew Janjigian
Hoping this one gets past the censors around here:
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Yojimbo ~/Library/Application\ Support/
Dennis
> Today I tried out Florian's method of syncing via dropbox, and I can
> verify that it does work. Syncing is rapid and reliable (faster than
> dotmac too; changes appear within minutes.)
The problem with this method (at least as far as I can tell) is that
it seems to be an all-or-nothing copy rather than the record-level
sync .Mac/MobileMe implements. So if you add a Yojimbo password item
on one machine and a new PDF on another machine and then sync, you'll
end up loosing data as one database overwrites the other. Am I missing
something?
-Dennis
Andrew Janjigian
Dennis
> This is true, but until the "Yojimbo already running" error can be
> gotten around, you can't have more than one copy running at a time,
> thus no such overwriting is possible.
But even if there was a way to work around the "Yojimbo already
running" limitation, wouldn't the same all-or-nothing copy problem
still exist? Unless Dropbox can somehow read the contents of Yojimbo's
database, it seems unlikely that it can do anything other than a file-
level copy. After all, it's just copying the file back and forth
between machines, similar to .Mac/MobileMe iDisk sync, isn't it?
-Dennis
Bob Withers
machines at the same time which, as Andrew as pointed out is currently
not possible with Yojimbo, but Drop box does not sync the entire file
but rather it syncs deltas. While this isn't "record level" it is an
approximation of it - only the data that has changed is synced.
Regards,
Bob
Derek Belrose
will be synced. So yes, the .Mac integrated sync works on a per
record basis, but dropbox will sync the file over and over again.
Andrew Janjigian
Dennis
> I'm no expert, but I am pretty sure that Bob is correct, Dropbox
> only syncs the new part of the file, not the entire DB. Here's why:
> It took ~20m to first sync the db on my machines. When I add a new
> item now, it takes about 2 seconds.
That sounds pretty cool. But I think the only advantage to this kind
of incremental copying is faster transfer rates. The mechanism doesn't
actually understand the file content or do any kind of Yojimbo record-
level syncing. So you still have a risk of data loss if you forget to
sync your data on one machine before switching to another. I'd also
fear an increased risk of database corruption.
But, of course, I could be completely wrong. :-)
-Dennis
Bob Withers
Dennis
> You really don't need to "remember" to sync, dropbox automatically
> detects changes and syncs them but if you had two machines off the
> Internet for a while and were making changes on both then it would
> probably be pretty easy to either lose data or corrupt the file.
Thanks for the clarification, Bob. I really don't mean to be a
curmudgeon about this. I'm glad some people are finding alternatives.
Just want to ask the important questions.
> Since Dropbox store deltas one nice feature they have is the ability
> to restore a file from a previous version.
That certainly sounds handy - a nice safety net.
> Every time you make a change, Dropbox only transfers the piece of
> the file that changed (also known as block-level or delta sync),
> making it easy to work with big files like Photoshop or Powerpoint
> documents.
Without having seen the Dropbox Web site, that's exactly what I was
imagining. I think the rsync Unix utility has the same capability (Or
was it somewhere else? Don't recall now).
-Dennis
Andrew Janjigian
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 10:51 AM, bgarlock <bgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
"If you do not do so,
the library is left in a state that causes the second copy to give a
"Yojimbo is already running error" when opened. This is definitely an
annoying bug, since if you walk away from an open YJ library that is
on a
remote machine, other copies will be inaccessible until you can return
to
that machine and close it. If anyone has any suggestions on how to
avoid
this, please let me know. "
You need to remove the Yojimbo lock file. This file resides in ~/
Library/Application Support/Yojimbo/.Yojimbo.lock
(note the period (.) before the filename, which makes it a hidden
file, and not viewable, by default, in the Finder. I wrote a simple
bash script that removes this lock file:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
#
#
rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Yojimbo/.Yojimbo.lock
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name it what ever you like, and make it executable:
chmod a+x yj-clearLock.sh
(or whatever filename you use)
Copy it to somewhere in your PATH so you don't have to specify the
full path to it, and then just type in the name of the file to run it,
and it will remove the lock file.
Good Luck!
Jim Correia
> It seems that the lockfile has changed with YJ 2.0. For me at least,
> the software no longer gives the error message when I leave the
> program running on one machine and open it on another.
> Unfortunately, this does not mean that it can be left open all the
> time, since Dropbox then creates two versions of the database, and
> syncing breaks.
The lockfile logic changed in 2.0 such that you won’t get a warning
when you are sharing your Yojimbo data via Dropbox. (This was a side
effect of other changes & improvements.)
This will be corrected in a future release.
- Jim