The next beta version of Jungle Disk on our roadmap is now available. Version 1.25 adds a number of new features and fixes a few issues that were found since the last release. Some key additions include:
- Fast file rename / copy support
- Upgraded AES-256 encryption
- Optional SSL for extra in-transit security
- Preservation of file modification times for backup
As always, you can see the full list of changes in the release notes.
I discussed the fast file rename support in detail in a blog posting yesterday. I’d like to touch briefly on two other new features today. First is the AES-256 encryption support. Jungle Disk has always had very secure encryption using the RC4 algorithm with a 128 bit per-file key. However, we’ve had requests to go even further so we’re now using the industry standard AES algorithm with a 256 bit per-file key. There isn’t any visible difference to users, except that you can rest assured knowing that your data is protected by the highest level of encryption commonly in use today. All newly uploaded data will automatically use AES-256. We’ve also updated our GPL source code on the download page to demonstrate key derivation and decryption using AES-256 for authors creating Jungle Disk compatible utilities.
Next up is modification time persistence. This is something that has been a top request for a while now, but has been challenging to implement for a few reasons. First is that S3 does not support a way to “set” the modification time to something other than the current date. We’ve managed to work around this limitation with a flexible meta-data scheme. The second issue is that the WebDAV protocol we use to integrate with the operating system does not have a standard method for setting modification times. Microsoft has implemented their own method, which we support for mapped drives in Windows XP and Vista so that copied files have their modified times preserved (note that there is a bug in XP that requires this hotfix if you want modification times to work correctly). Unfortunately on Mac and Linux the operating system never sends the modification time information to Jungle Disk. The good news however is that this doesn’t affect the automatic backup feature – it will correctly preserve modification times on all platforms. In fact, if you’ve already got data backed up, the first time a backup runs under the new version it will fix the modification times for all existing files (without re-uploading them). This may cause the first backup to run a bit slower than normal if you have a large number of files backed up, but shouldn’t cause noticable slowdown in future runs.
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Thomas said,
February 26, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
Fantastic piece of software! Great concept! I don’t see any reason not to use it
Jackal said,
February 27, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
Question I’ve always wondered: does encrypting a connection with SSL reduce the available thoroughput? I’ve never been able to see a huge difference, but does it add much overhead to the transfer?
If so, I’d consider not using SSL; otherwise, I’d vote that SSL be enabled by default…
Jungle Dave said,
February 28, 2007 @ 9:47 am
SSL adds a small amount of overhead for packet “framing”, but it should be fairly small. The main reason it isn’t enabled by default in the current version is that, as a new feature, we’d like to make sure it gets well tested before making it a default option.
Voldi said,
March 5, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
I would like to ask, is there any plan to release the command line version of JungleDisk? I am hosting my system in a data centre and accessing it via VNC. I schedule backup using JungleDisk, but when I logout, Jungledisk would also stopped. Looking forward to your reply. Thanks.
Jungle Dave said,
March 5, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
A command line version of Jungle Disk will be available at some point, however it will probably be after the first official release.
Kyle said,
March 7, 2007 @ 7:39 am
Awesome! I have been using this in beta for quite some time now and love it. $20 for lifetime? I would pay that every year for this — consider me sold. How soon can I pay you
Thanks for all the awesome work on this tool.
Damon said,
May 31, 2007 @ 1:14 am
Hi,
Jungle disk is working really well for me under Windows.. One feature idea for you. It would be cool to have a way to create a hyperlink to a AWS GET request for a file including access token.. That way I could easily email my friends links to files stored in my JungleDisk.. This would only work for unencrypted files though.. Perhaps you could include and option to change the encryption on a file by file basis.. Sort of a simple security tab..
Damon.