Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Obviously there is the ability to make something available across your systems. I'm more interested in actual files and settings etc that you have now placed in the DB for use across your system. I currently have two database files for two different database programs.
Would you be able to do something like an alias for your iCal data to point to a folder in Dropbox? Would that work? What about Address Book? Maybe Bookmarks? How do you use Dropbox? Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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One trick to do that (for iCal, Address Book, Keychain, etc.) is to move their data folders to within the Dropbox folder, then put a symlink pointing there at their original locations. There are various guides like this one to show you how. You'll want to combine those two commands into one to minimize the time the folder is unavailable, though, like so:
Code:
(cd ~ && \
mv "Library/Application Support/AddressBook" Dropbox/ && \
ln -s ~/Dropbox/AddressBook ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook) |
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http://ga.rgoyle.com
Join Date: May 2004
Location: In your dock hiding behind your finder icon!
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We use it as our main "fileserver" syncing our company docs between 3 machines. We have standard stuff in there, clients docs, etc.
One nice thing is that I have setup the Pages Templates to be in there. This didn't work when creating an alias within Finder, but it works fine when I used "ln -s ..." on the terminal. OK, I have given up keeping this sig up to date. Lets just say I'm the guy that installs every latest version as soon as its available! |
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Veteran Member
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I need something to replace Windows Live Sync (aka How Microsoft screwed up another great program, File Share.)
Is DB pretty easy to use? |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Yeah, I started using DB last night for the first time really. It's working great with my SplashID DB. Now all my systems can stay up to date wish ease. I'd prefer to use my own server for stuff like this, but at least the database for SplashID is heavily encrypted.
Also, thanks for the tips on ln -s guys. I've already handed out cookies. How about some other great ideas out there? Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Florida
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As I've said other places, I use it for 1Password, Coda and iPhoto libraries. It's a wonderful system because it's very fast and seemless. iDisk has some things to learn from DB.
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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iPhoto libraries? How big is your library? There is no way in the world I could fit my library on DB and call it a value. How big is a "normal" user's iPhoto library?
Web page code and all is a great idea. I don't do much coding though the concept is of great use to me. The problem I run into is that I have 4 Macs that I regularly use. This makes things like the Documents folder and even Mail store locally on the machine a challenge. So since I use IMAP but archive messages locally on my machine this might be a great way to have all my Mail databases in sync. So if I store a message locally on Beast I can still see it on Mork or my MB. Can you have multiple Dropbox accounts on one Mac? As it, my wife have a DB on her login and I have one on my login? This would to totally sweet if you could do that! Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Dark Cat of the Sith
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I only use Dropbox to store my classwork, some ebooks, and my fiction, so I'm fine with the 2GB limit. Given that I'm not syncing two Macs (yet), I have no experience with syncing anything like iTunes or iPhoto or even iCal. But for syncing text documents, Dropbox rocks.
"A blind, deaf, comatose, lobotomy patient could feel my anger!" - Darth Baras twitter ; amateur photographer ; fanfiction writer ; roleplayer and worldbuilder |
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Member
Join Date: May 2008
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I've got multiple accounts on my Mac and Dropbox installed, but it's one Dropbox that's accessible to all accounts. It was pretty odd, in fact, since I didn't necessarily want the files available (with full read & write capabilities) to all the accounts, but that's how it was installed. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Florida
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I pay for the 50 GB DB and between iPhoto (15 GB) and my web sites stuff I use about half that.
You aren't supposed to be able to have multiple DB accounts running at once, but I think Lifehacker ran an article about how to set it up yesterday or today. So it is possible with a work around. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I suppose the answer then would be to have two sub folders within the DB so her files go in there and mine in my subfolder. Must be one way they keep from people getting up to 6GB free.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Well, Address Book worked great across Dropbox but iCal not so much. I guess there are more files I'm missing. I put the Application Support/iCal folder there but that isn't enough apparently.
Edit: Found the missing piece. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Would it be "safe" to put keychain files in Dropbox?
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Florida
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Less than Stellar Member
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Same here.
The thing about dropbox is that I never really set out to use it in a particular way, it's just sort of become ingrained in my workflow. I'll often think "it'd be nice to have that file some place accessible." My first thought used to be my thumbdrive but that's Mac formatted and I usually need to get it on a PC. Then I'll remember to store it in my dropbox. It started out with just a few files like that and now it's quite a few more. I now install it on every computer I use. And this is despite the fact that I've got .mac. It's just much more automatic. If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Well, I just don't want to buy 1Password. I had the free version from MacHeist, and it's good but not enough for me to buy it. Maybe with me using DB more I just might for the sake of ease.
Keychain is free and does most of what I want. I just don't know if it's an encrypted file/database like 1Password or SplashID. I keep SplashID there, but it's encrypted. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I found out the hard way that Dropbox doesn't care if one of you computers have 10.5 and the others have 10.6. I lost my contacts and calendars because of this. Mork is still running 10.5 while the rest of my systems are running 10.6.
I was able to recover my data from a TM backup though so all is well in the end. It also brought to light that I don't need all my computers backing up my DB folder with Time Machine. So now only one of my Macs backs it up while I have excluded it on all the others. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Veteran Member
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Bummer . . .I was going to use this on a mix of 10.5 and 10.6 platforms.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Florida
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I don't understand the issue... I use DB with a 10.6 MacBook Pro and a 10.5 iMac without any issue.
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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The problem is that iCal and Address Book versions are different and when you "upgrade" the database to 10.5 from 10.6 there is a conflict. Then trying to go back to 10.6 it fails. I actually lost all my contacts and calendars due to this.
I think the real issue came having both versions open at the same time. I'm not going to test again right now though, but I'm pretty sure that's the issue though. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Florida
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I've thought about it and really only put it on Mork because I could. Fact is I really don't want to worry about my data on Mork in the event it get lost or lifted. While it's highly unlikely that I'd lose it but rather it be stolen.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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As turtle said it depends on the files you've got on there. I use it solely for normal file like docs or spreadsheets. I'm running - 10.5.8, 10.6.1, XP, win 7 rc, win 7 final across the machines I use dropbox with.
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Does anyone know which files/folders I need to put in Dropbox for my Safari Prefs and Bookmarks? The idea is that Safari operates the same no matter which machine I'm on.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Thank you sir!
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Veteran Member
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I am little confused how to use DB. (I guess it was the late night drinking). It does not look to work like Foldershare. Help me get over the basic idea behind DB I just installed in on two computers.
Once I have the DB icon under my "Places" on Finder, I thought I would just drag certain folders over to the Drop Box and out would then sync them between computers. But when I did this it appears to actually move the folders into the DB folder. Am I doing something wrong? Or is that the way it works? (I wanted to leave the folders in my Documents folder.) Thanks in advance and sorry to be so dense. Now that I got a job, I can buy more Apple products! |
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