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So, right now we're using Dropbox to share various data files around between approximately 10 Mac OS X systems.

However, we already have an S3 account and everyone on the lowest Dropbox plan of $10/month seems too expensive. We'd like to avoid any kind of local storage (share a disk on a desktop or something) since we're a geographically distributed team).

So, I am contemplating something that would allow us to replace Dropbox with our own home-grown solution. We are all fairly technical people and/or smart enough to follow some steps, so if it's not as "user friendly" as Dropbox we're all comfortable with that.

There are plenty of docs out there that have bits and pieces of what I want but some of the tools don't seem to fit the requirements:

  1. Transport security via SSL to the bucket
  2. Encryption of bucket contents
  3. Bi-directional syncing

Most of the scripts I can find on the internet use duplicity which appears to fail #1. It doesn't look like duplicity supports SSL to S3 — the docs don't state but the protocol looks like plain old HTTP.

Many scripts use GPG to encrypt files. This seems like it could work, however I have to make sure that each OS X client is able to use the same key to encrypt and decrypt files (key management is left to me to manage). FTP and other client-based apps don't seem to support this at all.

Finally, most of the scripts use one-way replication, e.g. using Amazon S3 as a simple backup store. As we'd be using Amazon S3 as the "repository" they fail this one.

Whew. So, I'd love a single tool that does this but after an exhaustive search I don't think one exists. In my mind, the magical tool would be some combination of TrueCrypt and rsync.

I'd be happy just knowing which tools out there can fulfill my 3 requirements, after that I can stitch together the rest. Any thoughts?

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closed as too broad by slhck Aug 16 '13 at 10:42


It sounds like you want <a href="jungledisk.com">JungleDisk</a>; functionality. Do you need anything that JD doesn't provide? –  Fred Apr 20 '10 at 13:28
JungleDisk costs money on a monthly basis. I don't want any recurring costs (other than Amazon S3) –  Matt Rogish Apr 20 '10 at 13:38
JungleDisk is pretty reasonable @ $.15 / GB. –  rodey Apr 30 '10 at 19:39
Not if you have 10 people using it. You have to pay per head –  Matt Rogish May 1 '10 at 16:24
You may want to review JungleDisk offerings. They have changed over the years. N.B. I'm not affiliated, just a satisfied customer. –  MarkHu Jan 31 '13 at 19:47

7 Answers 7

up vote 14 down vote accepted

Will Fuse Over Amazon do the trick?

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Fuse Over Amazon supports rsync, which could be useful. –  Alec Gorge May 1 '10 at 16:03
That looks rad. Taking a closer look now, thanks! –  Matt Rogish May 1 '10 at 16:26
Never used FUSE for Amazon, but +1 for FUSE in general. For OS X, not related to Amazon, see also the fine Macfusion. –  Arjan May 2 '10 at 13:28
I think this will work well. There's a paid version that does everything automatically... Interesting. Thanks!! –  Matt Rogish May 3 '10 at 16:03
Just got this going on OS X.. Sadly it seems pretty unusable for me :( Using Fuse4x. Upon creating directories they appear/disappear randomly, they don't show up in finder, and weird things happen in the terminal too. –  Justin Jan 15 '12 at 21:38

Well, I don't have a magic wand, but you could use rsync as the sync engine.

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have you considered http://www.tarsnap.com/?

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Here's another interesting looking option, using SecretSync with TntDrive:


I couldn't say how well it works, but it certainly seems straightforward to use. I think you'd have to pay for TntDrive, and SecretSync charges to sync over 2 GB of data.

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Duplicity now uses SSL connections unless you use the --s3-unencrypted-connection command-line argument, so using duplicity is now a solution again.

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I use Dragon Disk in windows. . http://www.dragondisk.com/

It's is freeware and cross-platform, but a bit slow to sync large number of files.

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The best solution so far is to combine a VPN account and S3 so you would properly get a much better deal then 10usd/plan of dropbox

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