[ale] Web based file storage

[Alex Carver]

On 7/19/2013 05:53, JD wrote:

> We replaced dotProject with Redmine about 3 yrs ago and have been extremely
> happy. It has very lite file management, plus a wiki per project and you can
> connect a code repo to each project (git/svn/cvs), if you like.  No indexing of
> "documents", so the wiki really is the best way to capture project information.

I tried Redmine but it doesn't fit our needs for project management so I 
stuck to dotProject (number one need was assigning multiple users to a 
single task, Redmine couldn't do it).  I wasn't really looking at it for 
file management, I just happened to notice it had a module and tried it 
out just in case.  The primary purpose of the dotProject install is the 
project/task managaement.

> Also, limiting the interface to just web-based GUIs doesn't mean you give up on
> a solid back-end using whatever else you want.  WebDAV had lots of security
> issues over the years and never took off due to that. There probably are many
> more. There are implementations, but clients must support the protocol.

Except that IT declared Webdav a no-go so I can't use it no matter what. :)

> For file management, we used Alfresco for years. It is documentum strength, but
> more like DocuShare until a custom interface is created. The default web
> interface is a little clunky, but they have NFS, CIFS, webdav, and web
> interfaces available.  The search and indexing was awesome.  It just became too
> cumbersome to upgrade due to a poor choice that I made early on - no upgrade
> path for the 2.9x versions.  These days, we provide only sftp access to the file
> server and encourage key-based authentication. We index using recoll (completely
> awesome!!!!)  Pretty much every platform supports sftp now with great clients.
> WinSCP rocks for our Windows users.  Filezilla works for others and the ability
> to mount using FUSE sshfs is very nice for those capable systems.

We (meaning the entire campus) has a DocuShare server but it's 
incredibly hard to use (everyone hates it) and we have to pay monthly 
per MB.  I might look at Alfresco and see what it can offer.  I need to 
avoid sftp for two reasons:  one is that many of the people that will be 
using the storage system aren't exactly savvy enough to deal with 
scp/sftp and two it's hard to use scp/sftp using only the browser based 
VPN client in use here (the actual VPN client is beastly and causes 
troubles so people stick to the browser client).  The browser client 
allows navigating internal web servers through its secure portal.  I 
might lean back towards sftp if I can convince them that it's not too 
hard to use.  But doing it from an iPhone or Android phone isn't as easy 
(finding a client that doesn't use ads, doesn't request excess 
permissions and doesn't secretly call home).


> Or if you are Microsoft shop, don't they still give away Sharepoint?  It is yet
> another way MS links more and more programs together so you can't leave. AD,
> file/print, documents, internal web storage, MS-SQL, then add in all the CALs
> and desktops ... soon a company is totally screwed on their MS software costs.
> Of course, I'd never actually recommend installing sharepoint.

Nope, no Sharepoint.  Server is LAMP and the clients are all across the 
map.  I've got a Win desktop, a Linux desktop and some other Win systems 
(proprietary equipment control software).  Three others have Macs.  A 
fourth has RHEL.  And then several of those people have iPhones (which 
files do get requested sometimes via mobile).  A couple people have 
Androids but they tend not to do mobile work as much as the iPhone people.

I'm aiming for shallowest learning curve for now.  I figured everyone 
knows how to browse a web page and if it looks like a typical tree 
structure, they can figure it out.  Adding client software and all sorts 
of other things starts to raise the bar a bit.