Possible bandwith-illimited solution to share files for all roguesci member

[DaedalusX]

I'm in the process of seting up a Slackware 10 linux box with apache 1.3.x with SSL module and proftpd 1.2.10, I would use gmailfs as a backend to store roguesci files from the official ftp.


Gmail, for those who don't know it yet, it a free mail service from google who offer a 1000mb of free space online.

+++
GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and uses the FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the filesystem, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail.

GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename. This means that you can use all your favourite unix command line tools to operate on files stored on Gmail (e.g. cp, ls, mv, rm, ln, grep etc. etc.).
+++

So, I can setup a ftp server and http server, only using my gmailfs drive as backend to store the files and gmail's bandwith to distribute it. FTP could be use for uploading/downloading/fxping (server to server transfer) and for those paranoid folks, they could use the https service to get their file 'anonymously'. I could also setup a simple php script that would upload files anonymously using SSL direcly into the gmail drive.

I've did some test on my debian/unstable machine and I've got pretty good speed, ~100-300k/sec, and it can handle multi-user pretty well.

PROs:

- Unlimited bandwith thanks to google.
- Anonymous upload/download for everybody


CONs:

- 1000mb limit; but it can be worked around using multiple account.
- It violate gmail's terms of service.


So, I'm asking, anybody here think this might be a possible way for us to share files other than the official ftp who is constantly hammered?

[Jacks Complete]

Anyone got a gmail account? I'm angling for an invite, since the mailbox is a Gig, and I guess there will be some issues with upload sizes for attachments (they cap it at 10Mb), but it would be better than the crappy streamload system if we all handed them out and swapped the files through that?

Any thoughts? It would seem no-one bothered with this gmailfs idea (which could well be a cunning honeytrap thing)

[Guerilla]

JC, I've got a few invitations left, just give me some email addy I can send one to. :)

I'm not sure either if gmail is all that reliable though, as along with the crappy size limit of attachments, it actually seems to scan the content of each post and picks words from them (I tend to get a lot of chemical supplier ads :P), maybe this is the case with all free emails, I dont know...wouldnt rely much on it anyways.

[megalomania]

I have just the thing for you to test out. I had a dream that a certain scientific websites files were accidentially archived on a university computer. When I woke up and went to that university I found a couple of gigs worth of a certain journal on the computer...

And I bet I have the same dream a few more times where several other journals are accidentially archived.

I'll give you a hint: The first issue was published in 1879 and the latest issue just this month...

[FrankRizzo]

Journal of the American Chemical Society?!? :) :)

I have just the thing for you to test out. I had a dream that a certain scientific websites files were accidentially archived on a university computer. When I woke up and went to that university I found a couple of gigs worth of a certain journal on the computer...

And I bet I have the same dream a few more times where several other journals are accidentially archived.

I'll give you a hint: The first issue was published in 1879 and the latest issue just this month...

[Jacks Complete]

Regarding Google, it would seem our search engine friend is being somewhat naughty!

http://www.google-watch.org/ has an interesting demo, searching for the following:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=abu+ghraib+torture
and
http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&q=abu+ghraib+torture&btnG=Search

The google image search gets you two images, one of which is a gif banner thing. The Yahoo! one gives back over TEN PAGES of images. Also note that the URL string for Google tells a fair bit about the browser and search settings used. Top this off with the vaguely famous "everlasting cookie" from Google, and you can see they track you quite a lot.

I'm switched already.

I would suggest taking care if we use a gmail account, since we know the mails are spidered, so some form of basic code should be used, or s p a c e s i n s e r t e d to fool it, perhaps? ROT13 would do...

[Jacks Complete]

Guerilla,

send one to dropbox {at} latinmail.com - I'm beginning to think that latinmail are scanning the emails and deleteing gmail invites - protecting themselves, I guess!

[skier4life99]

For highly requested files, you could create a series of yahoo accounts and post them in the briefcase section of each account, which holds 250Mb a piece. and if you made it 'open' and 'shared to public' you wouldn't have to worry about passwords, or any emailing that could get sticky if there is any spidering going on. plus this could free up bandwidth on the FTP for less frequently downloaded files.

Jacks_Complete, thanks for those links... I had just switched over to a gmail account and didn't know half of the stuff they talk about on that google-watch site... very interesting... maybe I'll stick with my other free account.