Another FolderShare Release — Getting Scared
Posted on April 22, 2008
15 Comments
Back in March, the FolderShare folks released a new beta release of the FolderShare client. I was excited until I realized there was no support for Windows 2000. That made me nervous, but I had hoped it wasn’t a big deal.
So far, everything has been ok though. I’m running the older version of FS on a Windows 2000 Server and it’s syncing just fine with the new version on a Windows 2003 server.
However…
Today another new version was announced. Something in that announcement has definitely grabbed my attention:
To bring as many people as possible up to date, we’ll start prompting users to upgrade this week. When the time comes, you won’t be able to sign in until you update.
(bolding mine)
Well, that’s going to cause me some issues. Major issues. Why? Because I’m a big dummy and have FolderShare as part of a production process at work. Yeah, I know that was dumb, but it has worked so well for so long!
I suppose I can go back to a robocopy based sync, but that’s not as “real time” as FolderShare is. It also takes over a half hour to run on the two servers and get ‘em in sync. (I last got in depth about robocopy in 2005).
Anyone have good reliable “real time” sync options to suggest? I’ve had PowerFolder suggested in the past, but have yet to try it…
Tags: beta, foldershare, robocopy, windows-2000
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15 Responses to “Another FolderShare Release — Getting Scared”
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Well, I feel your pain. I’m not entirely sure that I like where Foldershare is going, but I’ve been addicted to it since the very beginning… yes, when ByteTaxi had it in beta! The changelog for it isn’t very exhaustive, but I don’t know why exactly you SHOULDN’T be able to run it under Windows 2000. So, what I’ve done is removed the installer restrictions (using Orca) to allow it to install on a Win2K machine. I’ve not had a chance to try it because I don’t have any Win2K boxes running now. I won’t be able to try it in a virtual machine until next week, but I’ll post it for you to test if you’re brave
Let me know how it goes!
Get it here: http://www.yarascavitch.com/uploads/Foldershare_v14.0.1331.0415_for_Win2K.msi
Cheers!
Running Win2k SP4 Workstation. FolderShare.exe is nto a valid Win32 application. Installation is successful, but when trying to run the shortcut in Programs, it errors out. I also tried using Thinstall in XP and install on Win2k Worsktation but got similar error.
Your Win2k version erased the existing Foldershare files but did not create any new ones. My shortcuts do not work, and I cannot find any new installation of Foldershare.
Now I have found a new foldershare.exe in Documents and Settings. It has the brand new time stamp, so it was just installed. Windows says it is an invalid program, and it will not run.
Thanks to those who gave it a try! I’ll take it down for now and see if there can be another solution for Win2K once I get a virtual machine going next week. I’ll keep you all posted. In the meantime, keep strong
For now, I’m resorting to setting up an FTP server and using BeyondCompare on the other workstation to synchronize my files. Really, I’d love a freeware FolderShare clone that can perform delta-change updates and only involve the computers involved (no server on Microsoft.com required
) Pinch me, I think I’m daydreaming again!
I can fall back to robocopy… but the beauty of FolderShare is the real time sync. That makes it so much better than running a 15 minute log job every so often.
*sigh*
But yeah, looks like we’ll need to find alternatives.
Good effort Blake — hopefully you can get a “simple” hack going there…
Chris, my wife has been using Sugar Sync & seems to be doing a good job - free trial available, but it’s not freeware…
I tried Sugar Sync on my Win2k machine (2.4 P4), and it was too slow to even function. Beinsync was much faster, but it is also not freeware.
Okay, so the FTP Server & BeyondCompare was not a good idea. Having one side of the computer do all the comparison analysis was not a good idea.
So, I explored some more and started using rsync. There’s one called DeltaCopy which is an rsync GUI for Windows. I can synchronize using two passes - one from the server to client. And another from client to server. The -u makes so that newer files on the other computer is not updated by rsync. –progress gives you a real-time progress report. It is a little nerdy and not real-time, but it is working okay for me. rsync is free, fast, and thoroughly tested.
rsync.exe -v -rlt -u –progress “/cygdrive/F/music/” “user@server.com::music/”
rsync.exe -v -rlt -u –progress “user@server.com::music/” “/cygdrive/F/music/”
Good effort from Blake.
I think that what we really need is a patch for the old version (2.5.10) so that it doesn’t whine about being too old. Perhaps that can be done by skipping the version test, or by sending a more recent version number to the server.
I really believe the the old client can still use the FolderShare server, because until I rebooted one PC it remained connected to the server even though other of my PCs were already giving the “too old” message.
Has anyone tried hex-editing their old version of the FolderShare.exe so that it shows a more recent version?
Also, I need an older installer file for Windows 2000.
I tried looking for the version number in hex but couldn’t find it for sure.
2.5.10 can be found somewhere here:
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=FolderShareSetup-2.5.10.msi
The one I have is:
660480 bytes
CRC32 = 1AE694AD
MD5 = 42540FF7620371C0519A884774C9B746
SHA-1 = 706F0E004330E5806138C52598DF3650AA5CA00D
Thanks for the installer! I tried to install the Win2k friendly version and even the installer checks the server for version number. That also tells me this version is too old. I can look at the packets using WireShark, but I’m not a programmer so I wouldn’t know how to forge a newer version number. Does anyone know if Proxomitron could be used for such a purpose?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron