Google Is Once Again Offering 2GB Of Free Drive Space If You Complete The Account Security Checkup

https://security.google.com/settings/security/secureaccount

Google remembered Safer Internet Day, though. To celebrate, it has brought back the free data reward for completing a security audit of your account. A few minutes of your time gets you an extra 2GB of Drive storage for free.

The security checkup is painless and only takes a few minutes. You'll review your account recovery options, connected devices, services with permissions on your account, and 2-step verification settings. The 2GB of storage might not show up in your account immediately, but when it does, it will be there permanently.

Google did the same thing last year for Safer Internet Day, and it sure would be nice if they kept at it. We don't yet know when this offer will expire, but last year you had a week to complete the checkup. There might be a Google blog post at some point with details.

Common TCP/UDP Ports Used By Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL/centOS)

http://www.hostingreviewbox.com/rhel-tcp-and-udp-ports/

• Common/Popular IANA-Registered Ports
• UNIX-Specific Ports
• Ports Submitted To IANA By Network Community
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Ports

50 UNIX / Linux Sysadmin Tutorials

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/12/50-unix-linux-sysadmin-tutorials/

1. Disk to disk backup using dd command: dd is a powerful UNIX utility, which is used by the Linux kernel makefiles to make boot images. It can also be used to copy data. This article explains how to backup entire hard disk and create an image of a hard disk using dd command.
2. 15 rsync command examples: Every sysadmin should master the usage of rsync. rsync utility is used to synchronize the files and directories from one location to another. First time, rsync replicates the whole content between the source and destination directories. Next time, rsync transfers only the changed blocks or bytes to the destination location, which makes the transfer really fast.
3. Three sysadmin rules: If you are a sysadmin, you can’t (and shouldn’t) break these three sysadmin rules.
4. User and group disk quota: This article explains how to setup user and group quote with soft limit, hard limit and grace period. For example, if you specify 2GB as hard limit, user will not be able to create new files after 2GB.
5. Troubleshoot using dmesg: Using dmesg you can view boot up messages that displays information about the hardware devices that the kernel detects during boot process. This can be helpful during troubleshooting process.
6. RPM package management examples: 15 examples provided in this article explains everything you need to know about managing RPM packages on redhat based system (including CentOS).
7. 10 netstat examples: Netstat command displays various network related information such as network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, multicast memberships etc.,
8. Manage packages using apt-* commands: These 13 practical examples explains how to manage packages using apt-get, apt-cache, apt-file and dpkg commands.
9. Modprobe command examples: modprobe utility is used to add loadable modules to the Linux kernel. You can also view and remove modules using modprobe command.
10. Ethtool examples: Ethtool utility is used to view and change the ethernet device parameters. These examples will explain how you can manipulate your ethernet NIC card using ethtool.
11. NFS mount using exportfs: This is a linux beginners guide to NFS mount using exportfs. This explains how to export a file system to a remote machine and mount it both temporarily and permanently.
12. Change timezone: Depending on your Linux distribution, use one of the methods explained in this article to change the timezone on your system.
13. Install phpMyAdmin: phpMyAdmin is a web-based tool written in PHP to manage the MySQL database. Apart from viewing the tables (and other db objects), you can perform lot of DBA functions through the web based interface. You can also execute any SQL query from the UI.
14. Setup squid to control internet access: Squid is a proxy caching server. You can use squid to control internet access at work. This guide will give a jump-start on how to setup squid on Linux to restrict internet access in an network.
15. Add new swap space: Use dd, mkswap and swapon commands to add swap space. You can either use a dedicated hard drive partition to add new swap space, or create a swap file on an existing filesystem and use it as swap space.
16. Install and configure snort: Snort is a free lightweight network intrusion detection system for both UNIX and Windows. This article explains how to install snort from source, write rules, and perform basic testing.
17. Register RHEL/OEL linux to support: If you have purchased support from Oracle for your Linux, you can register to oracle support network (ULN) using up2date as explained here.
18. tftpboot setup: You can install Linux from network using PXE by installing and configuring tftpboot server as explained here.
19. Delete all iptables rules: When you are starting to setup iptables, you might want to delete (flush) all the existing iptables as shown here.
20. Disable ping replies: Someone can flood the network with ping -f. If ping reply is disabled as explained here we can avoid this flooding.
21. Block ip address using fail2ban: Fail2ban is a intrusion preventon framework that scans log files for various services ( SSH, FTP, SMTP, Apache, etc., ) and bans the IP that makes too many password failures. It also updates iptles firewall rules to reject these ip addresses.
22. Package management using dpkg: On debian, you can install or remove deb packages using dpkg utility.
23. Alfresco content management system: Alfresco is the best open source content management system. Everything you need to know to install and configure Alfresco is explained here.
24. Bugzilla bug tracking system: Bugzilla is the best open source bug tracking system. Everything you need to know to install and configure Bugzilla is explained here.
25. Rpm, deb, dpot and msi packages: This article explains how to view and extract files from various package types used by different Linux / UNIX distributions.
26. Backup using rsnapshot: You can backup either a local host or remote host using rsnapshot rsync utility. rsnapshot uses the combination of rsync and hard links to maintain full-backup and incremental backups. Once you’ve setup and configured rsnapshot, there is absolutely no maintenance involved in it. rsnapshot will automatically take care of deleting and rotating the old backups.
27. Create Linux user: This article explains how to create users with default configuration, create users with custom configuration, create users interactively, and creating users in bulk.
28. Mount and view ISO file: ISO files are typically used to distribute the operating system. Most of the linux operating system that you download will be on ISO format. This explains how to view and mount any ISO file both as regular use and as root user.
29. Manage password expiration and aging: Linux chage command can be used to perform several practical password aging activities including how-to force users to change their password.
30. ifconfig examples: Interface configurator command ifconfig is used to initialize the network interface and to enable or disable the interfaces as shown in these 7 examples.
31. Oracle db startup an sthudown: Every sysadmin should know some basic DBA operations. This explains how to shutdown and start the oracle database.
32. PostgreSQL install and configure: Similar to mySQL, postgreSQL is very famous and feature packed free and open source database. This is a jumpstart guide to install and configure postgresql from source on Linux.
33. Magic SysRq key: Have you wondered what the SysRq key on your keyboard does. Here is one use for it. You can safely reboot Linux using the magic SysRq key as explained here.
34. Wakeonlan Tutorial: Using Wakeonlan WOL, you can turn on the remote servers where you don’t have physical access to press the power button.
35. List hardware spec using lshw: ls+hw = lshw, which lists the hardware specs of your system.
36. View hardware spec using dmidecode: dmidecode command reads the system DMI table to display hardware and BIOS information of the server. Apart from getting current configuration of the system, you can also get information about maximum supported configuration of the system using dmidecode. For example, dmidecode gives both the current RAM on the system and the maximum RAM supported by the system.
37. Use the support effectively: Companies spend lot of cash on support mainly for two reasons: 1) To get help from vendors to fix critical production issues 2) To keep up-to-date with the latest version of the software and security patches released by the vendors. In this article, I’ve given 10 practical tips for DBAs, sysadmins and developers to use their hardware and software support effectively.
38. Install/Upgrade LAMP using Yum: Installing LAMP stack using yum is a good option for beginners who don’t feel comfortable installing from source. Also, Installing LAMP stack using yum is a good choice, if you want to keep things simple and just use the default configuration.
39. Template to track your hardware assests: If you are managing more than one equipment in your organization, it is very important to document and track ALL information about the servers effectively. In this article, I have listed 36 attributes that needs to be tracked for your equipments, with an explanation on why it needs to be tracked. I have also provided a spreadsheet template with these fields that will give you a jumpstart.
40. Disable SELinux: If you don’t understand how SELinux works and the fundamental details on how to configure it, keeping it enabled will cause lot of issues. Until you understand the implementation details of SELinux you may want to disable it to avoid some unnecessary issues as explained here.
41. Install PHP5 from source: This is a step-by-step guide to install PHP5 from source on UNIX environment.
42. Install MySQL from source: This is a step-by-step guide to install MySQL from source on UNIX environment.
43. Launch Linux clients on windows: If you are using SSH client to connect to Linux server from your Windows laptop, sometimes it may be necessary to launch UI application on the remote Linux server, but to display the UI on the windows laptop. Cygwin can be used to install software on Linux from Windows and launch Linux X client software on Windows.
44. IPCS: IPC allows the processes to communicate with each another. The process can also communicate by having a file accessible to both the processes. Processes can open, and read/write the file, which requires lot of I/O operation that consumes time. This explains different types of IPCS and provides 10 IPCS command examples.
45. Logical Volume Manager: Using LVM we can create logical partitions that can span across one or more physical hard drives.You can create and manage LVM using vgcreate, lvcreate, and lvextend lvm2 commands as shown here.
46. 15 Tcpdump examples: tcpdump is a network packet analyzer. tcpdump allows us to save the packets that are captured, so that we can use it for future analysis. The saved file can be viewed by the same tcpdump command. We can also use open source software like wireshark to read the tcpdump pcap files.
47. Manage partition using fdisk: Using fdisk you can create a maximum of four primary partition, delete an existing partition, or change existing partition. Using fidsk you are allowed to create a maximum of four primary partition, and any number of logical partitions, based on the size of the disk.
48. VMWare fundamentals: At some point every sysadmin should deal with virtualization. VMWare is a very popular choise to virtualize your server environment. This article will provide the fundamental information for you to get a jumpstart on VMWare.
49. Rotate the logs automatically: Manging log files is an importat part of sysadmin life. logrotate make it easy by allowing you to setup automatica log rotation based on several configurations. Using logrotate you can also configure it to execute custom shell scripts immediately after log rotation.
50. Passwordless SSH login setup: Using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id you can setup passwordless login to remote Linux server. ssh-keygen creates the public and private keys. ssh-copy-id copies the local-host’s public key to the remote-host’s authorized_keys file.

Kazam Screencaster Gets Webcam And YouTube Live Support, On-Screen Mouse Click And Keyboard Indicator

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/08/kazam-screencaster-gets-webcam-and.html

Kazam is a GStreamer-based screen recording and screenshot tool for Linux. The application supports recording the entire screen (with multi-monitor support), a window or an area and features:

• customizable framerate;
• option to show/hide the mouse when recording;
• record sound from speakers and/or microphone;
• keyboard shortcuts;
• configurable delay before capturing;
• automatic file saving;
• supports mp4 (H264), webm (VP8) and avi (RAW, HUFFYUV and lossless JPEG) video formats.

Kazam 1.5.3 was released recently and it includes some very useful new features:

• support for webcams: it can record just the webcam or it can display the webcam in a window on top of the screencast;
• support for broadcasting to YouTube Live;
• added on-screen keyboard indicator and mouse click indicator;
• new countdown timer.

 Here are a few screenshots with some of these changes:

Kazam mouse click indicator



On-screen keyboard indicator (notice "Alt Tab" under the Nemo window)

 

Kazam webcam options

YouTube Live options

Kazam demo 

Below you can watch a Kazam demo screencast recorded using the latest Kazam:

 (direct video link; for more videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel)

Install Kazam Screencaster in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Kazam is available in the official Ubuntu repositories, but it's an old version so it doesn't have the new features mentioned in this article. To get the latest Kazam in Ubuntu or Linux Mint (and derivatives), you can use a PPA.

To add the PPA and install Kazam Screencaster, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kazam-team/unstable-series
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kazam python3-cairo python3-xlib

For other Linux distributions, grab the latest Kazam (unstable branch) from HERE (BZR).

 

Report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.

The Most Popular and Useful Google Scripts

http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-scripts/28281/

Google Scripts offer programmatic access to most Google products including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Analytics, Google Contacts, Calendar, Maps and Google Analytics. The Google scripts are written in regular JavaScript language and they are hosted on Google’s servers.

Most Useful Google Apps Scripts

Here’s an always-updated collection of Google Scripts that will help you do more with your favorite Google products. And you don’t have to be programmer to use any of these scripts.

1. Files Permissions Explorer – See who has access to your shared files and folders in Google Drive and whether they view or edit permissions.
2. Google Form File Uploads – You can receive files directly in your Google Drive from anyone through HTML forms created with HTMLService.
3. Mail Merge with Gmail – Send personalized email messages to your contacts using the Gmail Merge add-on.
4. Send to Google Drive – You can save your Email and Gmail attachments directly to Google Drive with the Save Emails add-on.
5. Retweet & Favorite Bot – Another Twitter bot written in Google Scripts that will auto-retweet matching tweets.
6. Gmail Autoresponder – Reply to one or more email messages in your Gmail using pre-written email templates.
7. Website Uptime Monitor – Receive instant email and SMS alerts when your websites goes down. You can monitor all your web domains for free.
8. Amazon Price Tracker – Keep track of prices of your favorite products on Amazon and get email alerts when the prices go down or up.
9. Gmail Unsubscriber – Automatically unsubscribe your email address from mailing lists and bulk emails.
10. Read Receipts in Gmail – Use Apps Script and Google Analytics to track your outgoing Gmail messages and get notified when people open and read your email.
11. Advanced Gmail Filters – Have more control over the criteria for sorting incoming messages in your Gmail.
12. Send Google Spreadsheets as PDF – You can setup a recurring task that will convert your spreadsheet to PDF and email to specific recipients as per schedule.
13. Download Tweets Permanently – specify any hashtag and the script will download and save all matching tweets to a spreadsheet.
14. Schedule Gmail Emails – You can write the emails now and send them later at any date and time with Apps Script and Google Sheets.
15. Sell Digital Products Online – Use a combination of PayPal and Google Drive to setup your own digital shop online.
16. Save Google Voicemails as MP3 – The web app will automatically copy the MP3 of your Google voice mail messages from Gmail to Google Drive.
17. Gravity Forms to Google Sheets – Write a Google Script that will save your Gravity WordPress form entries to a Google Spreadsheet without Zapier.
18. Gmail Encrypt – You can encrypt your outgoing Gmail messages using the powerful AES encryption and no one will be able to snoop your private conversations.
19. 1-click Website Hosting – Use this Google Script to host your websites, images, podcasts and other media files on Google Drive with one click.
20. Google Web Scraping – Import Google Search results into a Google Spreadsheet with the ImportXML function for analysis or export them in other formats.
21. Flipkart & Snapdeal Price Tracker – Monitor and compare prices of items listed on Flipkart and Snapdeal and get price alerts via email.
22. Bullk Tweets & DMs – You can send personlized tweets and Direct Messages in bulk to Twitter users from a Google Spreadsheet.
23. Save Gmail Images – The script monitors your Gmail mailbox and will auto-save any image attachments to your Google Drive.
24. Sort Gmail by Size – Is your Gmail mailbox running out of space. The scripts will determine all the bulky messages in your Gmail mailbox.
25. Bulk Forward Gmail – The auto-forward feature in Gmail only works on incoming messages but our bulk forward script can forward even older email to your other email addresses.
26. Update Google Contacts –  See how your friends and family members can directly add or update their own contact information into your Google address book.
27. Google Contacts Map – The Google Script will plot the postal address of your Google Contacts on a Google Map. You can also export this data as a KML file for Google Earth.
28. Email Form Data –  Google Forms are the best tool for creating online polls and surveys. The script will email you the entire form data as soon as someone submits the form.
29. Auto Confirmation Emails – Send confirmation emails to the user’s email address after they submit a Google Form.
30. Schedule Google Forms – Set an expiration date for your Google Form and they’ll close automatically at a certain date.
31. Twitter Bot – Learn how to write your own Twitter bot that auto-responds to tweets. This particular bot queries Wolfram Alpha to answer queries.
32. WordPress Authentication with Google Scripts – Put anything behind a WordPress login be it a link to download a document from Google Drive or a web app created in Google Apps Script.
33. Twitter Out-of-Office –  You can create out-of-office automatic replies for people who are trying to reach you via Twitter and they wouldn’t expect a response from you right away.
34. SMS Alerts for Gmail – You can receive SMS text alerts for important incoming messages in your Gmail by connecting your mailbox with a private Twitter account.
35. Extract Email Addresses – The script scans your mailbox and creates a list of email addresses of people who have previously communicated with you.  Useful for building your email marketing lists.
36. Transfer Gmail – Moving to a different email address? The script will automatically copy all your email messages from your old Gmail inbox to another mailbox that could be on any web service.
37. Reminder for starred messages – Get a daily digest with a list of messages that you have “Starred” in your Gmail mailbox and may want to follow up on them.
38. Advanced Gmail Search – Gmail supports a variety of search commands but now you can also use Regular Expressions for searching messages on Gmail.
39. Twitter RSS Feeds – Twitter no longer provides RSS feeds but you can use Google Apps Script to create your own feeds for Twitter timelines, searches and lists.
40. Google+ RSS Feeds – This Apps Script based Chrome add-on will help you generate RSS feeds for any Google Plus user or even search results. Written by Eric Koleda.
41. Translate RSS – You can translate foreign language RSS feeds into your native language with Google Scripts and subscribe to them in your favorite news reader.
42. Gmail Label Feeder –  Create a RSS feed for any of your Gmail labels that you can later feed into Evernote, Pocket, etc. through IFTTT. Written by Martin Hawksey.
43. Gmail Meter – The script will help you analyze how you use Gmail and generates statistics like how much email you send, average length of messages, turn-around time, etc. Written by Romain Vialard.
44. Gmail Delay Send – While there are browser add-ons that let you schedule emailsin Gmail, the script is easier, safer and your messages will be delivered on a specified date and time. Written by Blair Kutzman.
45. Gmail Snooze – When you snooze an email, it disappears from view but reappears in the inbox at some specified time in the future. Written by Corey Goldfeder.
46. Gmail Auto Purge –  Similar to auto-sweep in Outlook, the script will automatically delete older email messages from specific senders after a certain period of time.
47. Gmail Clean-up – Create time-based filters in Gmail that will automatically move, archive or even delete all messages from any particular Gmail label that are older than “n” days. Written by John E. Day.
48. Save Gmail as PDF – The script will save the body of an email message as a PDF file. You can optionally send the converted PDF to your email address.
49. Instagram Downloads – Download photos belonging to specific tags from Instagram to your Google Drive with Apps Script. Written by Waqar Ahmad.
50. GDocs2MD – The script will convert your Google Drive documents into the popular Markdown (.md) format that can be imported into several publishing platforms. Written by Renato Mangini.
51. Gmail NoResponse – It tracks your email messages in Gmail that are awaiting response and where you may want to send a follow-up mail. Written by Jonathan Kim
52. Force Password Change – If you are an admin of a Google Apps domain, use this script to force all your domain users to change their passwords. Written by Waqar Ahmad.
53. Text Browser – A Lynx-inspired browser that lets you browse the web in text and is written using Apps Script. The browser can also be used as a proxy server for reading web content.
54. Self-destructive Messages – Send confidential messages inside a Google Sheet and the message will disappear after it has been read.
55. Auto-Expire Shared Folders – You can set an expiry date for your shared folders in Google Drive and the shared links will automatically expire at the specified date and time.
56. Reddit Scraper – Use the Reddit API with Google Scripts to download all posts from any Reddit to your Google sheet.

How to Sort Gmail Messages by Size

http://www.labnol.org/internet/sort-gmail-by-size/21191/

What do you do when your Gmail account storage is nearly full? You can either purchase additional storage space from Google – they charge $5 per year for 20 GB – or a cheaper alternative would be that you scan your Gmail mailbox for messages that contain large file attachments and delete (or forward) all the bigger messages and recover precious space.

The problem is how do you find these bulky messages in your mailbox when Gmail doesn’t offer an option to sort and filter messages by size?

Sort GMail Messages by Attachment Size

What we use is a simple Google Sheet that connects to Gmail, computes the size of individual messages and lists the bulky ones (size > 1MB) in the same Sheet. Here’s how you can get started:

1. Create a copy of the Gmail Sort Google Sheet in your Google Drive.
2. Click Scan Mailbox under the Gmail menu and authorize to let the script access your Gmail Inbox. It is an open-source Gmail Script that runs in your own Drive.

Sit back and relax as the script will pull the message list in the sheet. If the process stops for some reason, click Scan Mailbox again and the script will resume scanning from where it left off.

Once the sheet has a list of all the bulky message, you can sort the sheet by theSize column to find the big ones. Or use the Filter option (the Funnel icon) to find messages that are within a particular range (5 MB < size < 10 MB). Click the “View” link to open the corresponding message in Gmail, bulk auto-forward the big email to another email address or use the Save Emails add-on to download the big emails and attachments to your Google Drive.

Troubleshooting tips: If you get an error that says “Service invoked too many times for one day” or “Exceeded maximum execution time”, you may want to wait for some time before re-running the program. These are Google Apps Script limits to prevent abuse.

Awesome Google Scripts → Custom Google Scripts →

Sort Gmail Messages by Size with a trigger

If your Gmail mailbox is large, you can also set up a time-driven trigger to let the script run automatically without manual intervention. In this case, you can even close the browser tab and the script will run in the background. Here’s how:

1. While the Google sheet is open, go to Tools -> Script Editor. On the next screen, choose Resources -> Current Script Triggers.
2. Click “Add a New Trigger,” change the Event from “Spreadsheet” to “Time Driven” and set a minutes timer that triggers every 10 minutes.
3. Save the trigger, authorize the script if it requires and close the sheet.

12 Open Source Cloud Storage Software to Store and Sync Your Data Quickly and Safely

http://www.tecmint.com/free-open-source-cloud-storage-tools-for-linux/

Cloud by name indicates something which is very huge and present over a large area. Going by the name, in technical field, Cloud is something which is virtual and provides services to end users in form of storage, hosting of apps or virtualizing any physical space. Now a days, Cloud computing is used by small as well as large organizations for data storage or providing customers with its advantages which are listed above.

                                    12 Free Open Source Cloud Storage Software’s

Mainly, three types of Services come associated with Cloud which are: SaaS (Software as a Service) for allowing users to access other publically available clouds of large organizations for storing their data like: gmail, PaaS (Platform as a Service) for hosting of apps or software on Others public cloud ex: Google App Engine which hosts apps of users, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) for virtualizing any physical machine and availing it to customers to make them get feel of a real machine.

Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage means storage of data away from users local system and across the span of dedicated servers which are meant for this. At its earliest, CompuServe in 1983 offered its customers 128k of disk space which could be used to store files. Whereas this field is under active development and will be because of potential threats including: loss of data or information, data hacking or masquerading and other attacks, many organizations have come forward with their own solutions to Cloud Storage and Data Privacy which is strengthening and stabilizing its future.

In this article, we will present some of selected contributions for this concern which are open source and successfully being accepted by huge masses and big organizations.

1. OwnCloud

A Dropbox replacement for Linux users, giving many functionalities which are similar to that of DropBox, ownCloud is a self-hosted file sync and share server.

Its open source functionality provides users with access to unlimited amount of storage space. Project started in January 2010 with aim to provide open source replacement for proprietary cloud storage service providers. It is written in PHP, JavaScript and available for Windows, Linux, OS X desktops and even successfully provides mobile clients for Android and iOS.

OwnCloud employs WebDav server for remote access and can integrate with large number of Databases including: SQLite, MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL.

Provides large number of features countable of which include: File storage and encryption, Music Streaming, content sharing across URL’s, Mozilla sync hosting and RSS/Atom feed reader, one-click app installation, Video and PDF viewer and many more.

The latest version of ownCloud i.e. 8.2 adds on other new features including: improved design, allows admin to notify users and set retention limits on files in the trash.

                                                                             OwnCloud

Read More: Install OwnCloud 8 to Create Personal Cloud Storage in Linux

2. Seafile

Another file hosting software system which exploits open source property to avail its users with all advantages they expect from a good cloud storage software system. It is written in C, Python with latest stable release being 4.4.3 released on 15th October 2015.

Seafile provides desktop client for Windows, Linux, and OS X and mobile clients for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Along with a community edition released under General Public License, it also has a professional edition released under commercial license which provides extra features not supported in community edition i.e. user logging and text search.

Since it got open sourced in July 2012, it started gaining international attention. Its main features are syncing and sharing with main focus on data safety. Other features of Seafile which have made it common in many universities like: University Mainz, University HU Berlin and University Strasbourg and also among other thousands of people worldwide are: online file editing, differential sync to minimize the bandwidth required, client-side encryption to secure client data.

                                                                Seafile Cloud Storage

Read More: Install Seafile Secure Cloud Storage in Linux

3. Pydio

Earlier known by the name AjaXplorer, Pydio is a freeware aiming to provide file hosting, sharing and syncing. As a project it was initiated in 2009 by Charles du jeu and since 2010, it is on all NAS equipment’s supplied by LaCie.

Pydio is written in PHP and JavaScript and available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux and additionally for iOS and Android also. With nearly 500,000 downloads on Sourceforge, and acceptance by companies like Red Hat and Oracle, Pydio is one of the very popular Cloud Storage Software in the market.

In itself, Pydio is just a core which runs on a web server and can be accessed through any browser. Its integrated WebDAV interface makes it ideal for online file management and SSL/TLS encryption makes transmission channels encrypted securing the data and ensuring its privacy. Other features which come with this software are: text editor with syntax highlighting, audio and video playback, integration of Amazon, S3, FTP or MySQL Databases, image editor, file or folder sharing even through public URL’s.

                                                                  Pydio Cloud Storage

4. Ceph

Ceph was initially started by Sage Well for his doctoral dissertation, and in fall 2007 he continued on this project full time and expanded the development team. In April 2014 Red Hat brought its development in-house. Till now 8 releases of Ceph have been released latest being Hammer in April 7, 2015. Ceph is a distributed cluster written in C++ and Perl and highly scalable and freely available.

Data can be populated in Ceph as block device, a file or in form Object through RADOS gateway which can present support for Amazon S3 and Openstack Swift API’s. Apart from being secure in terms of data, Scalable and reliable, other features provided by Ceph are:

1. network file system which aims for high performance and large data storage.
2. compatibility to VM clients.
3. allowance of partial/complete reads/ writes.
4. object level mappings.

                                                                    Ceph Storage

5. Syncany

Released in about an year ago in near March 2014, Syncany is one of the lightest and open source cloud storage and file sharing application. It is currently being actively developed by Philipp C. Heckel and as of today, is available as a command line tool for all supported platforms, but GUI version is under active development.

One of the most important feature about Syncany is that it is a tool and requires you to bring in your own storage, which can be FTP or SFTP storage, WebDAV or Samba Shares, Amazon S3 buckets etc.

Other features which make it an awesome tool to have are: 128-bit AES+Twofish/GCM encryption for all the data leaving the local machine, file sharing support with which you can share your files with your friends, offsite storage as chosen by user instead of provider-based storage, interval-based or on-demand backups, binary compatible file versioning, local deduplication of files. It can be more advantageous for companies who want to use their own storage space rather trusting some providers provided storage.

                                                                    Syncany Cloud Storage

6. Cozy

Not just a file sharing or synchronization tool or software, Cozy is bundled as a complete package of functions that can help you build your complete App Engine.

Like Syncany, Cozy provides flexibility to user in terms of storage space. You can either use your own personal storage or trust Cozy team’s servers. It relies on some open source software’s for its complete functioning which are: CouchDB for Database storage and Whoosh for indexing. It is available for all platforms including smartphones.

Main features which make it a must to have Cloud storage software are: ability to store all the Contacts, Files, Calendar, etc in the Cloud and sync them between laptop and smartphone, provides ability to user to create his own apps and share them with other users by just sharing Git URL of the repository, hosting static websites or HTML5 video game consoles.

As a step further to provide its availability even for cheap hardware’s, Cozy team has introduced Cozy Light which performs well even on cheap hardware’s like: Rasberry Pi, small Digital Ocean VPS etc.

                                                                 Cozy Cloud Storage

7. GlusterFS

GlusterFS is a network attached file storage system. Initially, started by Gluster Inc., this project is now under Red Hat Inc. After their purchase of Gluster Inc in 2011. Red Hat integrated Gluster FS with their Red Hat Storage Server changing its name to Red Hat Gluster Storage. It is available for platforms including Linux, OS X, NetBSd and OpenSolaris with some of its parts licensed under GPLv3 while others dual licensed under GPLv2. It has been used as a foundation for academic research.

GlusterFs uses a client-server model with servers being deployed as storage bricks. Client can connect to server with custom protocol over TCP/IP, Infiband or SDP and store files to the GlusterFs server. Various functionalities being employed by it over the files are: file-based mirroring and replication, file-based stripping, load balancing, scheduling and disk caching to name a few.

Other very useful feature of it is that it is flexible i.e. data here is stored on native file systems like: xfs, ext4 etc.

                                                          GlusterFS Storage

Read More: How to Install GlusterFS in Linux Systems

8. StackSync

StackSync is a Dropbox like tool running on top of OpenStack swift which is specially designed to tackle the needs of organizations to sync their data at one place. It us written in Java and released under GNU General public license v3.

Its framework is composed of three main components: a synchronization server, Openstack swift, desktop & mobile clients. While the server processes metadata and logic, Openstack is focused on storing the metadata while desktop and mobile clients help users sync their data to their personal cloud.

StackSync employs various data optimizations that allow it to scale to cater the needs of thousands of people with efficient use of cloud resources. Its other features are: provision of RESTful API as a Swift module which allows mobile apps and other third party applications to use it to sync data, separation between data and metadata which makes it flexible for deployment based on different configurations, provides both Public configuration which is useful for Public Cloud providers and Private configuration which solves the problems of big organizations aiming for a better cloud storage solution.

                                                           StackSync Cloud Storage

9. Git-annex

Git-annex is another file synchronization service developed by Joey Hess, released in October 2010 which also aims to solve file sharing and synchronization problems but independent of any commercial service or central server. It is written in Haskell and available for Linux, Android, OS X and Windows.

Git-annex manages the git repository of the user without storing the session into git again. But instead it stores only the linking to the file in the git repository and manages the files associated to the link at a separate place. It ensures the duplicacy of file which is needed in case recovery of lost information is required.

Further, it ensures availability of file data instantly as and when required which prevents files to present on each system. This reduces a lot of memory overhead. Notably, git-annex is available on various Linux distributions including: Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc.

                                                                       Git-Annex

10. Yandex.Disk

Yandex.Disk is a cloud storage and synchronization service released in April 2012 and available on all major platforms including: Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. It allows users to synchronize data between different devices and share it with others online.

Various features provided by Yandex.Disk to its users are: built-in flash player that lets people preview songs, sharing of files with others by sharing download links, synchronization of files between different devices of same user, unlimited storage, WebDAV support allowing easy management of files by any application supporting WebDAV protocol.

                                                                    Yandex-Disk

11. Bitcasa

Developed by Bitcasa Inc. Which is a California Based company, Bitcasa is yet another solution for open source Cloud Storage and synchronization available for Windows, OS X, Android and Linux. Not directly an open source software, but it is still a part of Open Source community as it uses those software’s of which many are open sourced like: gcc/clang, libCurl, OpenSSL, APR, Rapid JSON etc.

With main features being file storage, access and sharing other features which make it popular among customers across more than 140 countries worldwide are: its convergent encryption protocol which is mostly safe but with less risks associated with it as reported by an article, provision of secure API’s and white label storage applications for OEM’s, network operators and software developers.

                                                                     Bitcasa Storage

12. NAS4Free

NAS is acronym for ‘Network Attached Storage‘ and ‘4Free‘ indicates its free and open source nature. NAS4Free released under this name in March 2012. It is a network attached storage server software with a user interface written in PHP and released under Simplified BSD License. It supports platforms including i386/IA-32 and x86-64.

NAS4Free supports sharing across multiple Operating Systems. It also includes ZFS, disk encryption etc with protocols such as: Samba, CARP, Bridge, FTP, RSYNC, TFTP, NFS. Unlike other software’s, NAS4Free can be installed and operated from USB/ SSD Key, Hard Disk or can even be booted from LiveCD, LiveUSB with small USB key for config storage. NAS4Free has won awards including Project of month (August 2015) and Project of the week (May 2015).

                                                            NAS4Free Network Storage

Conclusion

These are some known Open Source Cloud storage and synchronization software’s which have either gained a lot of popularity over the years or have just been able to enter and make their mark in this industry with a long way to go. You can share any software that you or your organization might be using and we will be listing that with this list.