Replacing Dropbox with: Amazon S3 + SSL + GPG/TrueCrypt + Mounting on OSX ??

Question

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?

Solution 1

Will Fuse Over Amazon do the trick?

Solution 2

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

Solution 3

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

Solution 4

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

http://www.completelyprivatefiles.com/forum/topic.php?id=21

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.

Solution 5

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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Comments

[Peter Choi]

It sounds like you want <a href="jungledisk.com">JungleDisk</a> functionality. Do you need anything that JD doesn't provide?

[rodey]

JungleDisk is pretty reasonable @ $.15 / GB.

[Matt Rogish]

Not if you have 10 people using it. You have to pay per head

[MarkHu]

You may want to review JungleDisk offerings. They have changed over the years. N.B. I'm not affiliated, just a satisfied customer.

[slhck]

Interesting question, but unfortunately it attracts too many low-quality answers and seems open-ended, sorry.

[Alec Gorge]

Fuse Over Amazon supports rsync, which could be useful.

[Arjan]

Never used FUSE for Amazon, but +1 for FUSE in general. For OS X, not related to Amazon, see also the fine Macfusion.

[Matt Rogish]

I think this will work well. There's a paid version that does everything automatically... Interesting. Thanks!!

[Brent Faust]

@Arjan MacFusion is no longer supported. But [FuseforOSX](osxfuse.github.io) looks good.

[Arjan]

I think Macfusion is still supported, @Rubistro, but MacFUSE itself is dead. Indeed I am using FUSE for OS X now; for Macfusion see the SSHFS installation notes (but I don't currently use that).

[Brent Faust]

@Arjan OK, great. What apps do you use with Fuse for OS X? Do you find that better than just using Transit to mount the S3 volume under OS X?