[ale] Question: Transparent document sharing over the Internet

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Jason Smith wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> This is not strictly a Linux question as much as a
> general technology question.

Maybe not a Linux question - but a durn good question all the same.

> 
> Problem : Transparent document sharing
> 
<<snip problem statement>> 
> Solutions
> 1. I was thinking of simple solutions like a script
> that woke up every 5 mins and would scp the documents
> over / send an email with the document as an
> attachment and so on.
> 
> Are there more elegant non-obstrusive ways of doing
> this ?

I don't claim to have a solution, much less a known "good" solution. I'm 
babbeling off the top of my head in hopes that it might help...

I'm not sure I'd use a time repeating script, but rather one which fires 
when the laptop connects to a network, which is something that I will 
assume Windows is capable of. After testing for the ability to connect to 
a server with a secured login, rsync/wget/something all the appropriate 
directories with a personalized directory on the server. Once on the 
server, changes can be propegated to the working directories of the other 
people who need to see the documents, backed up, and/or put under some 
form of version control.

Of course, I'm assuming that your colleages are disciplined enough to at 
least put documents into the right directory and keep them there.

Of course, there are document management schemes out there, both for money 
and I think I've seen an open source/free item in the last six months.

It also seems like this is a situation that the AFS system is supposed to 
address, but now we are _way_ out of my realm of knowledge. 
Carnegie-Mellon(sp??) University had or has some research into this type 
situation.

Hope this mis-mash helps with some leads. I'd love to hear how a solution 
turns out!

-- 
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Try Ignorance
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