On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 00:48 +0100, Stuart Ellis wrote: > > Perhaps the most basic question for an automatic sync is "is the link > likely to disappear whilst I'm working ?" We can guess that links with > certain qualities are bad (bandwidth too low, connection hasn't been > available or stable for a period of x seconds, user specifies that that > link should not be used for sync). > > We can't automatically tell when the user will want to disconnect the > link themselves, so the concept of arranging completely automatic > (rather than scheduled) backups may be problematic unless the backups > can be safely broken up into small sets that can complete quickly. The > Windows file sync software can automatically backup on login and > logout. It drove me nuts that it would spend several minutes working > through my entire home directory after I had decided that I wanted to > switch off the laptop. > Windows provides a good example of how it should not work. It needs to be something can be performed in the backgroun and can be interrupted and recover gracefully. And it shouldn't be triggered by login/logout. Those are probably the times when the user wants it least. In the morning they boot up and want to get into email/web whatever to start getting stuff done. The last thing you need is the drive sitting there chugging while it determines what it needs to sync. At logout, you're heading home the for the day, trying to beat traffic, etc and the last thing you want is to have to wait for that 650MB iso you just downloaded to sync! -- David Hollis <dhollis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
