Beta-test Bitcasa do it yourself

Small introduction

Some time ago (or rather September 15, 2011) on Habré flashed an article - "Cloud" service Bitcasa can become a serious competitor to Dropbox
So, I wondered what kind of Bitcasa it was. And, as a curious person, I immediately gave them as many as three emails to participate in the preliminary testing.

And today, finally, it happened ... An invitation fell on all three boxes.

Part 1. Download and Install

So, follow the link from the email and see the following picture:

Alas, the Linux version is not yet ready. But there is under Mac OS X and under Windows. In general, it seems that initially everything was done under Mac OS X. First, the alpha mark is opposite to the Windows version. But on the second factor a little later.
So, download the Windows version, install. When installing, we immediately notice several things:
1. GUI is made on Qt4.
2. For the file system, Dokan is used - an analogue of FUSE for Windows.
From this we can assume that the Linux version will be executed on FUSE. However, as they do and see.
')

Part 2. First launch

When you first start it is proposed to register in the system. As I understand it, during the beta test period registration using any email, except for those to which invitations were sent, is impossible. However, everything went well for me, and after a while I see the main window of their GUI software.

In this screenshot, I created the UnlimStorageTest folder. Initially, there was only a folder Sample Videos, which is some kind of video junk.
So, finally create your own daddy, to store your files. I chose the simplest option - the item “Cloudify” appears in the context menu.

In addition, you can either click on the button in the GUI and manually type / select the folder, or simply drag the folder to the main program window.
After that, the folder begins to look like a shortcut:

Frankly, quite a strange decision. Anyway. And now about the second factor, why it seemed to me that the service under Mac OS X was initially sawed:

Do the .DS_Store files seem to be peculiar to Apple products? ..
Well, okay, this is all offtopic. And let's look at the properties of the newly formed volume!

Wow, 7.99 exabytes! I did not know that Windows can display such huge numbers. In fact, such a volume will be enough for a hundred years for any of us :) However, they declare absolute unlimited ... So, perhaps, these are “drawn” numbers, because the infinity icon cannot be shoved there.
Let's proceed to the next stage - uploading files!
I want to say that the data transfer is satisfied. In any case, the files were copied at a speed of about 3 megabytes per second. A good result ... True, perhaps this is due to caching. By default, Bitcasa reserves as much as 4 GB for its cache. The value is adjustable in ranges from 1 to 33 GB. This setting may be system dependent ...

Web portal

And now a little about web-access to files. In Bitcasa, this is called the Portal. We open a page, we drive in login and the password and we get on such page here:

In general, the list of files and folders is somewhat unusual. For example, here is a screenshot with a lot of folders attached to each other:

On the one hand, the decision is very unusual, and on the other, it’s convenient, if you think about it. UPD: As knowledgeable people say, this interface is similar to the Mac OS Finder interface.
Actually, let's see the file:

In general, the functionality is very poor: you can view files, download them and ... That's it. Neither move, nor delete, nor rename. However, perhaps all this will appear in the future - Beta, though.
I must say, the web interface is decently slow.

Sharing files

As I understand it, you can share only one of the root folders. A separate file is not possible. Just once the entire folder. With all its subfolders.
When the corresponding button is clicked, the link of the portal portal form is created.
The output here is the result:

A service file is being downloaded, which is simply a plain text file, in which two lines simply contain the same identifiers that are encoded in the link.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to open its own folder in this way. As you can see from the instructions, a Bitcasa client is required to open such folders.

But all is not so smooth. And therefore...

Part 3. Problems. Big problems.

Alas, everything is quite buggy. The problems are generally strange. But first things first.
1. Cyrillic file names are not supported.
And "not supported" - I put it very gently. Files zalyutsya. You can even see them in the file list. But you cannot read or rename, move or even delete these files. Not at all. Including you can not delete the folder in which such files are contained.
But if you, God forbid, have created a folder with Cyrillic symbols ... With every attempt to delete such a file, Bitcasa just crashed. Once, Windows crashed even into BSoD. And I began to forget what it is, naive ...
2. Simultaneous reading and writing are not supported.
Yes, yes, you heard right. If you copy files into the Bitcasa folder, and at the same time from the same folder (meaning root), you tried to open some other file — yes, even just to update the listing of the folder! - get ready for a very strange phenomenon ...
All subsequent copied files will be absolute zeros. The right size. But completely filled with zeros. Including the file in the process of copying which this incident happened, will also be written with zeros. Half normal, half zero.
But it's not so bad.
If ALL these “zero files” are not deleted, then any subsequent file will also turn into just zeros.
Now imagine that you wrote down a file with Cyrillic characters in the title, and accidentally pressed F5 ...
Actually, these two problems are more than enough. Of course, this is Beta. But it is strange that they did not notice such problems before ...

Conclusion

The idea is probably good. I do not know, it's too early to judge. Still, unlimited space on the Internet is a very tasty morsel. But bugs, bugs ... Now I understand why they allow testers so limitedly - the project is still too cheese.
Not to mention the fact that there is no client not only for Linux, but also for mobile devices - the presence of which is declared on their own main page. Well, the lack of API.
Maybe I'm too critical of the raw beta. Well, the rest is for you to judge.

UPD: review of Mac version from mister scoff
Another review of the Windows version from Mr. Kharkov

UPD 2: Here you have the first ten invites: we invite you here to an end!

UPD 3: Here you have the second ten invites: we invite you here to an end!

UPD 4: Here are the third ten invites to you: we invite you here to an end!

UPD 5: Here are a few dozen of invites:
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
- welcome here
Fuh, tired of further crying.