DropBox for Online Backup and More

DropBox is a cool idea, very well implemented. Thanks to Genotrance for tweeting about it.

It starts with online backup of your data. I’ve wanted this for a while. Install the DropBox client on your system, create an account, and start putting your stuff into “My DropBox”. Everything inside that folder is automatically sync’ed up to their servers. You can even access all folders and files from their website. So far so good.

Then comes sync between two or more computers you own. Once you install the DropBox client on two systems, the data in your DropBox stays synced to both your computers. Modify on one, have it synced magically to the other. Neat!

Next: I have a folder with several files I’m collaborating on with my wife. I add it to my DropBox and share it online with her to her DropBox. Now we can both modify files in that folder from our respective computers. No more emailing attachments back and forth. Cool!

There’s also a “My Pictures” folder inside your DropBox. If you drop your pics to that folder, the website creates a flash-based gallery for you to share with friends and family. Since I’m on Flickr I don’t see myself using that feature much… except for quick-n-dirty picture shares perhaps.

Support for Windows, Mac, and Linux? Check.

Security? They say all data is SSL encrypted during transfer and all files are 256-bit AES-encrypted on disk (Amazon’s S3). Obviously the security of DropBox’s software and architecture also matter a lot. So far I haven’t stored anything sensitive on DropBox. I can see myself using encryption in future. (Some people are storing TrueCrypt volumes on DropBox.)

Free to try? Check. You can keep using it for free with 2GB of space, with paid upgrades to 50GB and 100GB. And if you refer others to it, you get additional space. If you want to try DropBox, click on the image below, and you and I will both get 250 extra megabytes (drool).

Go on, try it. You know you want it.

Hunt-n-peck on Dvorak

Once again I’ve taken up the Dvorak keyboard layout. I’ve switched to Dvorak on my primary workstation and my laptops. After years of touch-typing on qwerty, I’m back to hunt-n-peck and learning the new layout.

The last time I tried this, it didn’t last very long. Wish me better luck this time.

Why do it?

As a learning test. How long does it take to memorize new key positions? Both brain and muscle memory are involved.

Supposedly Dvorak is easier on the hands — though this is a subject of dispute.

In the half-day that I’ve used it, I’ve drawn the new layout on a beige keyboard with a Sharpie, unlearned the vim keys, taken tutorials online, appreciated the Windows on-screen keyboard, and realized the difference between an English mix of letters and an engineering / coding mix.

Let’s see how this goes!

Update at end of day 1: 15 to 20 wpm without looking at the keyboard!

Update at end of day 2: 20 to 25 wpm. The switch is going well!

OpenVPN

I recently set up OpenVPN at home. It’s a pilot for someone who runs a business, and needs remote access to a samba file server located at the office.

There are several pieces to the puzzle, so I’ll list them all below.

Ubuntu: The first step was to buy a used Athlon 64 desktop system with 1.5 GB of memory and upgrade it with a 500 GB Seagate Barracuda hard disk. I installed 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 on it, desktop edition. Using the Synaptic package manager I installed Samba and OpenVPN from Ubuntu repositories. Simple enough. I also threw in openssh-server for ease of administration and file transfer, and proprietary graphics drivers for getting a decent display.

Port forwarding: On my Belkin router I enabled forwarding of port 1194 (default port for OpenVPN) to my Ubuntu machine. However the IP address of my Ubuntu machine was a DHCP address assigned by the router, so that posed a problem, solved by the next piece of the puzzle.

Static IP: I had to set the Ubuntu machine to a static IP on my home network to enable port forwarding. (For some absurd reason this worked on one Ubuntu machine but not on another… I’m still investigating why.)

DynDNS: I had to access this system from outside my home network, and I have a typical DSL connection with a dynamic IP address. So I signed up for a free DynDNS.com account. My Belkin wireless router has built-in support for DynDNS, and I decided to use it instead of a standalone client.

OpenVPN Client: On a laptop I installed the OpenVPN client. Since the Ubuntu repository had given me a release candidate version of 2.1, I chose to install the latest 2.1 release candidate rather than the stable 2.0.9 version. The 2.1 series comes with the OpenVPN GUI integrated, which is a big plus.

Key Generation: I read the steps on the OpenVPN HOWTO and generated the required certificates and keys on the Ubuntu server. Then I copied over the required keys and certificates to the client laptop.

Configuration: From the HOWTO, creating a config file for a tun configuration proved easy enough for both client and server, with lzo compression enabled. I did not need bridging since Samba was on running the same server as OpenVPN.

So did it all work together? Of course not… read on!

First, my router’s DynDNS update didn’t work as expected. When I had restarted my router and DSL modem for some reason, the DynDNS client on the router recorded a bogus non-routable IP address before the DSL modem could get an IP address from upstream. And then the DynDNS client on the router promptly proceeded to update my DNS record globally with this bogus non-routable address. What’s worse, even after I corrected the situation with a manual update, my router refused to give up its earlier cached DNS lookup that pointed to the bogus IP. As a result, I couldn’t refer to my VPN server by name at all.

The alternative I considered was a Perl program called ddclient. It worked for a first update but did not run successfully in daemon mode… haven’t yet figured out why.

The second issue came up when I had connected successfully and was in the testing phase. I was able to see my Samba share from my client, but my connection was unstable. I decided to switch from UDP to TCP, and then it started to work reliably. To make this switch, I had to edit the server config file and restart the service, edit the client config file, and change the port forwarding setting in the router.

How well does it perform?

Going strictly through my own internal wiring, I was able to push or pull about 2 to 3 Mbps from my laptop to my Samba server, each way. The laptop was connected using wireless 802.11g. From a friend’s home, I got about 300 to 350 Kbps for reads; I didn’t test writes.

I suppose setting up an OpenSSH server and using SSH tunneling would have worked just as well, with the addition of a virtual NIC. But this was cooler.