[unclassified] [Box Backup] Portability and public source depot

[Nick Knight]

Hello all,

I agree, with everything said. If you have a windows box I will happily
donate a copy of Visual C++ .Net. If you want to commit to this then let
me know where to send a copy?

The windows version communicates over a named pipe - this I can help
with.

The web services would be great - can I also add something which screams
to the user to back up all of their keys!

More information over the command socket - I agree also I have a need to
monitor boxbackup and email is not a good thing for easily spotting
issues which require intervention.

Also Ben, can I have a login for the SVN?

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: boxbackup-admin@fluffy.co.uk [mailto:boxbackup-admin@fluffy.co.uk]
On Behalf Of Chris Wilson
Sent: 22 October 2005 21:54
To: boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk
Subject: Re: [unclassified] [Box Backup] Portability and public source
depot

Hi Stefan and all,

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Stefan Norlin wrote:

> We are referring  to the command-line one. The Win port
> of the "core" Box product.
>
> I agree there is a need for a user interface in a longer perspective.
> I have not looked at the boxi stuff yet, but that might be something
> that is portable to Windows as well. It seems it runs under Cygwin
> currently but claims to have the possibility of being cross platform.

Boxi was designed specifically to be cross-platform portable, and
written=20
using the wxWindows toolkit for that reason. I would be very interested=20
and happy to help with the porting.

Since I don't use Windows and don't have any non-free compilers, it may=20
not be easy for me to do all the work myself. Any contributions would be

gratefully accepted :-) The source code is in Sourceforge CVS and anyone

can download it and play with it. I'd be interested to know what breaks=20
when compiling with MSVC or whatever compiler was used for the Box
Backup=20
win32 port.

The main thing that I know needs doing is to change the communication=20
method used by Boxi on win32 from Unix sockets to TCP/IP ports, to match

the native client. It should also be possible to compile for either=20
version on Cygwin.

> As of now we are mainly interested in putting together a more
> user-friendly installation with the possibility of entering config
> parameters during the installation process. Then it would be
> easy/easier to get it up and running on a Win box.

I've been considering writing a web service with an HTML GUI that allows

for easy registration and setup, but I haven't written any code yet.
This=20
would allow Boxi to generate new keys, upload them to the server, and
get=20
a signed cert automatically after the server admin has authorised it.

I think it's not easy to create keys and certificates on Win32 at the=20
moment (OpenSSL is required?) and that should definitely be fixed. I
think=20
the code could be built into Boxi without too much trouble, but
OpenSSL's=20
APIs are complex and not well documented as far as I can see (if you
know=20
better then please point me to right part of TFM :-)

To make Boxi friendlier, it needs more information from Box Backup about

backup progress and files which couldn't be backed up. I've already=20
extended the command socket API but that needs to be merged into the
newly=20
open tree, and further work is necessary. It might be easier Boxi was=20
itself a full-featured bbackupd, and didn't require a separate
executable,=20
but that would take quite a lot of work.

> If yes, maybe you could have a closer look at boxi and see what
> it would take to get it up and running on a Windows box natively.

By all means, please do, and let me know what I can do to help.

Cheers, Chris.
--=20
_ ___ __     _
  / __/ / ,__(_)_  | Chris Wilson <0000 at qwirx.com> - Cambs UK |
/ (_/ ,\/ _/ /_ \ | Security/C/C++/Java/Perl/SQL/HTML Developer |
\ _/_/_/_//_/___/ | We are GNU-free your mind-and your software |

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