Grab 50GB of Box Online Storage Free for Life (2013-02-12)

[IainB]

Good offer. Via Lifehacker:
Grab 50GB of Box Online Storage Free for Life

If you know of someone who needs it or could use it, then get it whilst it's available.
No strings - "Restricted to New email account sign-ups".
Lifehacker suggests dropping the dot in your email address...that should work OK.

[Edvard]

Got it, and it can be synced on Linux by mounting via WebDAV:
http://gstoyanov.com...c-box-account-linux/

Done.   

[Rover]

 

Thanks

[40hz]

Got it, and it can be synced on Linux by mounting via WebDAV:
http://gstoyanov.com...c-box-account-linux/

Done.  

-Edvard (February 12, 2013, 10:19 PM)

@E - nice find!

-----------------------

If you don't want to autosync but just want to use your Box account as a network mounted share, this will show you how to set Box up in any Linux based file manager that has a "Connect to Server" option.

It also  includes instructions to set it up to automount on boot. But I think that's more trouble than it's worth if you're not also doing automatic syncing or something similar. I just manually link and login as needed since I generally don't like to automount anything that resides on a server I don't own.

[Deozaan]

I'm not getting the confirmation e-mail. . .
It finally arrived!

[4wd]

Got it, and it can be synced on Linux by mounting via WebDAV:

-Edvard (February 12, 2013, 10:19 PM)

I've been trying for the last 6 days to get my Centos 6 VPS to talk to Box via davfs.........that's about the first time I've seen https:// mentioned in the process.

Yes, it should have been obvious

Back to the drawing board....

[Edvard]

I just manually link and login as needed since I generally don't like to automount anything that resides on a server I don't own.

-40hz (February 13, 2013, 07:51 AM)

+1  

If you don't want to autosync but just want to use your Box account as a network mounted share, this will show you how to set Box up in any Linux based file manager that has a "Connect to Server" option.

Gigolo does this on Xfce, but it has dependencies on gvfs, which has caused problems for me with Thunar, and the only fix was uninstalling gvfs.   Apparently, thunar has been fixed, so I'll be trying again.
EDIT: mounting normally with 'mount -t davfs https://www.box.com/dav /home/edvard/Box' works fine, but Gigolo mounting with davs://www.box.com/dav results in 301...  
Maybe I'll just be content with manual mounting in a terminal, or whip up a shell script or maybe a GUI with Yad and call it good.

[Rover]

Got it, and it can be synced on Linux by mounting via WebDAV:

-Edvard (February 12, 2013, 10:19 PM)

I've been trying for the last 6 days to get my Centos 6 VPS to talk to Box via davfs.........that's about the first time I've seen https:// mentioned in the process.

Yes, it should have been obvious

Back to the drawing board....

-4wd (February 13, 2013, 06:27 PM)

I have this working on Fedora.  How can I help?

What's the VPS part after Centos?

[4wd]

I have this working on Fedora.  How can I help?

-Rover (February 13, 2013, 11:51 PM)

Thanks - you might live to regret it though   

What's the VPS part after Centos?

Virtual Private Server, it's running a minimal install of CentOS 6 i386, (shell access only at this point), just enough to give me a AMPP setup atm.

I've installed davfs2 and neon but I'm currently getting the following:

/sbin/mount.davfs: can't open fuse device
/sbin/mount.davfs: trying coda kernel file system
/sbin/mount.davfs: no free coda device to mount

If it's any easier, I can load the VPS up with Fedora 14 or 17, (still trying to see which distro I like ).

[leyonchung1]

I juts have signed up for 50GB account of Box.net. It is remarkably good and i wish i could get another one  I have observed that in short span, many start-ups entered into the market and offering free online storage service. I use Dropbox and SugarSync to save all my data.

[Deozaan]

Looks like they took down the offer.

Sorry, we were unable to validate your offer. For the latest info on special deals and promotions you may qualify for, be sure to add Box on Facebook, check out The Box Blog or follow us on Twitter.

-https://www.box.com/signup/o/dell_50gb_give_get

[kyrathaba]

Yeah, I was only able to get the 5.0 GB. Still, I'm using it to back up photos, non-sensitive docs, etc.

[Edvard]

Looks like a project has been started for Box (and others) synchronization.  No code yet, but looks promising:
http://www.syncany.org/

Also, nice article on keeping a davfs mounted folder and a local folder synchronized with unison:
http://seb.so/50gb-o...n-linux-with-webdav/

Keeping it sync'd with cron is an OK idea, but I like the footnote of syncing when file changes happen.  Apparently, the two options mentioned there, FAM and Dnotify, are deprecated on some distros (re: Debian).  Dnotify has been replaced with Inotify in the kernel and a little research seems to show Incron to be the better option to interface with that (Gamin being a drop-in replacement for FAM but uses inotify):
http://www.debian-ad...ion.org/articles/581

I tried to see if syncing could be done more 'properly' through the Box API, but you need to register your software with them to get an API key.  I'm not writing software, just seeing if some shell script magic could be done... 

[4wd]

I'm not writing software, just seeing if some shell script magic could be done... 

-Edvard (March 05, 2013, 12:46 AM)

Something like these from Jack Dwyer?

Box.net-Backup-bash-script
Box.net-Backup-bash-script-v2

Must get back to trying to get davfs to work on the VPS so I can actually do a backup....

[IainB]

Please note that, though the original offer was taken down, when I signed in to my 50Gb account, it said I could send invites (only two address spaces given). So I guess all the lucky 50Gb new account holders have been allocated two invites.
Anyway, I sent one off, and got a confirmation that the address had been sent an invite. Now I have just one address space left to invite.


The email address needs to be unique. If you already have a Box account, then you could only use the same email address for the new free 50Gb one if you modified the address - e.g. change it from [email protected] to [email protected] (sans the full stop in john.smith). Maybe [email protected] would do also, I am not sure.

EDIT 2013-03-07 1227hrs: Looks like this does not work.
@Deozaan has just informed me that:

Yes, the e-mail was sent, but when the person tries to accept the offer, it will just tell them that that offer cannot be verified or something similar. The e-mail invites don't work anymore. It sends the email, but the person you send it to can't redeem it.

I hadn't been aware of that.   

[tomos]

^ I sent kyrathaba an invite around the same time -
wonder if his worked...

Anyone actually using box yet?
IIUC, their intro video says sync can only be done via folder(s) on the desktop.
Which is not ideal if you want to upload 50GB

Otherwise they say you can upload via web interface. But I'm not sure what happens if you upload an active folder - I'm not sure how that might be updated at a later stage.

[kyrathaba]

Neither worked, but thanks to both tomos and IainB for their efforts. I do have 5.0 Gb at Box.net, and (although I don't like the service or interface nearly as much as Box) I have 50.0 Gb of cloud storage at www.adrive.com. Since it's convenient from my tablet, I also have cloud storage with SkyDrive and Google Drive. Oh, and of course Dropbox. Everyone has Dropbox, right?

[Edvard]

I'm using my 50GB box account, but sparingly.  Currently, I have uploaded everything that was on my Dropbox, just to see how the upload process went.  None of the files were over a few megabytes, so file size wasn't an issue.  Next I'll try uploading my music folder (I don't have a whole lot of music in mp3 format, so it'll fit...) to see how that goes.

@4wd: Thanks for that, interesting methods.  Not exactly what I was looking for, because I wanted to stay away from using other languages (no real reason, just personal preference).  I'll post later with my current attempts using pure Bash, a combination of unison and rsync to keep files up-to-date, and Yad for the graphic interface.

[Edvard]

Looks like a project has been started for Box (and others) synchronization.  No code yet, but looks promising:
http://www.syncany.org/

-Edvard (March 05, 2013, 12:46 AM)

Syncany now has a working alpha release for testing:
https://github.com/b...ier/syncany/releases

Downloading now...