[gentoo-user] Looking for advice on shared file system.

[Peter Lewis <prlewis@letterboxes.org>]

Hi,

I've been looking around for a while now for some sort of "shared file system" 
which might meet my needs a little better than that which I am currently 
using.

I regularly use two different computers (desktop and laptop) for the same work 
and have always had a network (samba) drive mounted from a server box in 
order to be able to have one "documents repository" for all three machines. 
This works fine, so long as I am connected to the network (or at a push, the 
internet via ssh and fuse), but it leaves me at a loss whilst I am working 
from the laptop and not able to be connected. There is also the added 
negative point that when I am not on a fast connection, working on a network 
drive can slow things down quite a bit.

For a while, I have been getting around this by using rsync on a seperate 
directory, which I keep mirrored between all three machines. I have a simple 
shell script which will "check out" the files from the server to the local 
machine and another which will "check them back in" when I have finished 
working with them. The basic idea is to use something like

rsync -rvzu --delete <rest of command>

This does work, though I have to remember to check them back in before I 
finish. Once, I forgot and the script deleted all the changes. Also, it is 
quite inflexible and I just know that I am going to trip up by having various 
versions of the files on different computers.

So... what I am looking for is some kind of file system a bit like IMAP is for 
mail, which will keep the files synchronised with each other (preferably 
automatically, or via a cron job or something) but also maintain a local copy 
of the files so that I can unplug from the network, carry on working and plug 
back in later - all seamlessly.

Does anyone know of anything like this, or can make a recommendation?

Alternatively, is it possible to mount a filesystem over a disconnected IMAP 
connection (perhaps using fuse) in a similar way to with mail? Is this a daft 
idea?

Many thanks,

Pete.
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