Problem/Justification
Downloading specific files is ok, but what really unlocks dropbox functionality is sync functionality. ExpanDrive and MountainDuck have great sync agents and support lots of different file shares. I’m sure there is a long term story for iXsystems to release something for CloudShare but a shortcut for the near term would be to partner with an existing developer to work with them to get a solid integration out quickly to boost adoption of WebShare/Connect and include it with the Plus/Enterprise tiers of Connect as a limited application that only connects to WebShare not S3 etc.
Impact
Would act as a full replacement for Dropbox or OneDrive.
User Story
Jane is a remote worker. She often is on an airplane or on a job site and doesn’t have fast internet. She syncs projects to her hard drive before going onto mobile service and can keep working with entire projects without a reliable connection.
Jim is a video editor working remotely. Pulling files on-demand results in unusable latency that causes software freezes and crashes. Instead syncing overnight gives him local NVMe speeds of just the projects he’s currently editing.
If I were you I’d use something like syncthing for this use case.
Nowhere close to the same use case. If you want to browse a 100TB share and then right click on a folder and select “keep offline” there is nothing available like that for the Syncthing backend.
Also the Webshare feature of Truenas is explicitly designed to work around the issues with Syncthing lock contention and race conditions with SMB/NFS users.
That’s funny. That wasn’t part of your requirement from your original post.
“Ok Jim, open Syncthing. Where is Syncthing? We’ll open a web browser and go to 172.0.0.1:90020. Ok now go to settings in the top right it’s a gear icon. Click settings and get your computer’s share code. It’s like 6 random letters. Ok read them out to me. Ok I’m going to add it to the server. Next I need you to log in using the SMB share and setup a VPN. Ok now browse the SMB share. Copy the folder name. Now go to your Syncthing local website. Now type in in these 4 random symbols and characters. Ok now take the folder path for the project you needs strip out the server and share name. That’s the first two folders. The words before slashes. Oh you’re on Mac not the word SMb that’s a third one you want the project folder name. Ok. Now add an asterisk after it. That’s the star shaped thing in your keyboard…”
etc.
Syncthing is not usable for employees who aren’t in IT. And even experts in Syncthing can’t browse Syncthing to even build the exclude/include list.
The goal is Dropbox like ease of use.
