README for Asink Project Copyright (C) 2013 Aaron Lindsay [email protected]

Purpose

Asink seeks to be a file synchronization system which doesn't force users to choose between open-source and convenience. It also seeks to maintain a high level of security and privacy, and therefore optionally encrypts all files client-side. It is written in Go and contains both a client and server, so users are free (and, at this point, expected) to host their own servers.

Disclaimer

As this point, Asink is in its very early stages, and should not be trusted. While I sincerely appreciate anyone who is willing to help me beta test it, I cannot be responsible for any lost or corrupted files. Please, please, PLEASE, keep appropriate non-Asink backups of all your files.

It is also quite possible that there are security/privacy-related bugs, so I urge you not to solely rely upon Asink to keep prying eyes away from your files (at least until a later release).

Installation

Please see the INSTALL document included with this repository for installation instructions.

Server Usage

At this point, starting the server is simple -- just run `asinkd start'. This will create a SQLite database in the current directory, use a socket at /var/run/asink/asinkd.sock for communication, and serve content on port 8080. The database configuration is not currently configurable (this is to come in a future version), but the socket and port are configurable on the commandline.

Once it is running, you may use other asinkd' commands to interact with the Asink server. For instance, you may use asinkd useradd user1' to add a user named user1 to the server and create their password (this is necessary for a user to use the server).

Each level of commands documents its usage if you add -h'. For example, asinkd -h' will display the available commands, while `asinkd useradd -h' will display the available options for that individual command.

Client Usage

If you have installed and configured the client for your machine, using the client is as easy as running asink start' (though you will have to add -c /path/to/config/file' if your configuration file is in a nonstandard location).

If you have not yet configured your client, please see the INSTALL file in the same directory as this README file.

Similarly to the server, adding -h' to the asink' command or any of its subcommands will display the help information for that command.

At this point in its development, the most notable asink' subcommand is status', which will enable you to see quick statistics about what the Asink client is doing. At the moment, these statistics are rather rough, but if you're interested in knowing when all your files are done synchronizing `asink status' will do the trick.

Debugging

If you run into issues with your system failing to watch directories, check the currently allowed number of inotify watches:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

To increase the number of allowed watches, increase the number reported, and write it back out as root (you will need to consult your distribution to identify a permanent method for fixing the number of allowed watches, as this will only change it until your next reboot):

$ echo 100000 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches