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Speaking of this, anyone have suggestions for an offline-tolerant distributed filesystem? Basically a dozen devices which get a few minutes/hours of internet ac

Speaking of this, anyone have suggestions for an offline-tolerant distributed filesystem? Basically a dozen devices which get a few minutes/hours of internet access per day/week and not necessarily at the same time. I've considered Git but not sure how much overhead it adds.

cesarb 4y ago
> Speaking of this, anyone have suggestions for an offline-tolerant distributed filesystem? Basically a dozen devices which get a few minutes/hours of internet access per day/week and not necessarily at the same time. I've considered Git [...] If you've considered git, I would suggest looking at git-annex (https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/), which is tuned for that kind of mostly-offline use case.
samwillis 4y ago
Conflict resolution is the issue here. Effectively sync systems like DropBox and iCloud do this by flagging conflicting edits when you come back online and duplicate files (new a new file name) so there is no data loss. For a lower level file system though that's not really possible as you may be running databases, or other data models, that need to understand conflict resolution themselves.
- em-bee 4y ago
  why would you share a database over a distributed filesystem, other than for backup purposes where you only have a single source so you should never get a conflict?
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    See cryptocurrencies.
- PhilipRoman 4y ago
  For my personal use case I don't really care about conflicts - they could be crudely resolved by a timestamp or even randomly. Having backups in the event of a conflict would be good. Files are never updated incrementally, just added, renamed or deleted.
thfuran 4y ago
That's intractable. Conflict resolution has to be done differently for different types of data, so it has to be done at a higher level than filesystem, unless you want a special filesystem that only supports a specific kind of file or has some other very significant restrictions.
- preseinger 4y ago
  i don't mean to blindly +1 but this is the actual correct answer and i think it deserves to be emphasized
seri4l 4y ago
Not a distributed filesystem but syncthing can easily do what you're asking for.
- PhilipRoman 4y ago
  Seems promising, thank you.

cesarb 4y ago

> Speaking of this, anyone have suggestions for an offline-tolerant distributed filesystem? Basically a dozen devices which get a few minutes/hours of internet access per day/week and not necessarily at the same time. I've considered Git [...] If you've considered git, I would suggest looking at git-annex (https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/), which is tuned for that kind of mostly-offline use case.

samwillis 4y ago

Conflict resolution is the issue here. Effectively sync systems like DropBox and iCloud do this by flagging conflicting edits when you come back online and duplicate files (new a new file name) so there is no data loss. For a lower level file system though that's not really possible as you may be running databases, or other data models, that need to understand conflict resolution themselves.

em-bee 4y ago
why would you share a database over a distributed filesystem, other than for backup purposes where you only have a single source so you should never get a conflict?
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  See cryptocurrencies.
PhilipRoman 4y ago
For my personal use case I don't really care about conflicts - they could be crudely resolved by a timestamp or even randomly. Having backups in the event of a conflict would be good. Files are never updated incrementally, just added, renamed or deleted.

thfuran 4y ago

That's intractable. Conflict resolution has to be done differently for different types of data, so it has to be done at a higher level than filesystem, unless you want a special filesystem that only supports a specific kind of file or has some other very significant restrictions.

preseinger 4y ago
i don't mean to blindly +1 but this is the actual correct answer and i think it deserves to be emphasized

seri4l 4y ago

Not a distributed filesystem but syncthing can easily do what you're asking for.

PhilipRoman 4y ago
Seems promising, thank you.