Ubuntu One: April 2010 Archives

Now that the Ubuntu One cloud-storage service can sync any directory in the system instead of just things in a Ubuntu One folder, I have been anxious to start using it to sync my files to the cloud for availability not just on any other Ubuntu machines I might set up but also via the Web interface (and hopefully in other OSes, Linux and not, in the future).

So I tried to get Ubuntu One going in this newish 10.04 installation. No go. I logged in, but nothing would sync.

Perhaps my "situation" is unusual (but there are enough Ubuntu users that it could be more common than I think). Here it is:

I briefly had Ubuntu 9.10 installed on a different computer, with which I created an account and used Ubuntu One. That computer has since been parted out to make this current laptop work.

Now I have this "new" computer with Ubuntu 10.04. Logging into Ubuntu One, the system listed my "old" computer as a synced device. There was nowhere to add a new computer on the Web page, as detailed in the Ubuntu One how-to. Yep, no "add this computer" button.

I did a bit of searching and found this Ubuntu forum post in which Ubuntu One developer Joshua Hoover gives these instructions:

I'm sorry this process isn't as streamlined as it could be. We're working on fixing that, but in the time being, you should be able to open System->Preferences->Ubuntu One and then get prompted in a web browser window to add your computer to your Ubuntu One account. If this never happens, can you do the following?

1. Open Applications->Accessories->Passwords and Encryption Keys

2. If you have an UbuntuOne token (under Passwords: default), right-click and select delete

3. Open a terminal session (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and run:
killall ubuntuone-login ubuntuone-syncdaemon

4. Open System->Preferences->Ubuntu One

5. A browser window should open and you should be prompted to add your computer

In my case, doing steps 1 and 2, there were no UbuntuOne tokens in the Passwords and encryption keys.

So I went to step 3, and ran this line in the terminal:

$ killall ubuntuone-login ubuntuone-syncdaemon

Then I went to the Ubuntu One application (System-Preferences-Ubuntu One), and I was then prompted to add my current computer.

Now all looks good in the Ubuntu One window. But none of my files are yet visible at https://one.ubuntu.com/files/.

I'll wait a bit. More later.

Later: I rebooted, and when I logged in, Ubuntu One was active, but none of my files were syncing.

Before I was able to actually add this computer to the Ubuntu One account, I had only chosen one folder to sync - which I did in the file browser by right-clicking on it and then left-clicking on "Synchronize to Ubuntu One" in the resulting menu.

Now that the machine was hooked up to Ubuntu One, I did this again - right-clicked on the folder and then syncronized it. The sync began immediately, and a minute or so later the folder was accessible in my Web interface at https://one.ubuntu.com/files/.

Hopefully this process is super-intuitive for new users who don't have Ubuntu One accounts left over from previous machines.

So now it's working. I'm not treating this as a backup. I've heard stories about people who accidentally deleted files on their Ubuntu machine and hoped to pull them from their Ubuntu One backup. But since their Ubuntu One account had already synced, the files were gone from the cloud, too. So my existing backup routines will continue.

Like most users I expect, I'm sticking with the free 2 GB plan. Sure I have more than 2 GB of files, and the 50 GB plan would take care of that, but $10/month is a bit pricey for my current needs, which are probably somewhere in the 5-10 GB range. I'd rather pay for a backup service like rsync.net that doesn't automatically sync, or something Time Machinish that does snapshots that will allow me to go back and grab old files.

And I'm ramping up my use of Google Docs - my complaint about syntax highlighting seems to be solved, as I wrote some HTML in Docs — and it was pleasantly colored. I'll probably be taking advantage of the bulk upload to Docs once I separate my image files from my text files, a separation I used to adhere to but abandoned due to laziness. (I don't need a bunch of JPEGs mucking up my Google Docs files ...).

What Google Docs and Gmail are allowing me to do is work not just across Ubuntu machines but with any computer I happen to be using, whether it's one of mine or not. At the moment anyway, that flexibility is worth letting Google spy on me and market to me based on that spying.

However, Google One and technologies like it — with files in the cloud (either synced or cloud-only) and local applications accessing them — seems to allow for a more full-featured computing experience than the current crop of Web-based applications such as Google Docs. However, I am enjoying all the features of Gmail that traditional mail clients such as Thunderbird and Evolution don't have.