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I love iFolder, Novell's file synchronization solution. It keeps a handful of folders synchronized across multiple machines including my desktop and 2 laptops.

There hasn't been much development on the open-source side of things and some recent Microsoft updates combined with having iFolder installed have lead to nuisance application crashes. Usually it's after I save a file and exit a program (like notepad) and the offending module is "iFolderShell.dll".

There are some discussions on the issues over @ Novell's forums. It looks like 3.8.4.1 and 3.9 beta clients may have solved this problem - but those clients are only available to Novell's "paying" customers.

There is one way to fix the problem: disabling iFolder shell integration. The only effect that I've seen so far is that I don't see the iFolder icon on the folders that I'm currently synchronizing with iFolder - but other than that things are staying synchronized. Save the following paragraph into a .reg file and double-click it. Hopefully this solves your client crashes like it did for me. Include the REGEDIT4 line below:

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\iFolder0]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\iFolder1]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved]
"-{AA81D831-3B41-497c-B508-E9D02F8DF421}"
"-{AA81D830-3B41-497c-B508-E9D02F8DF421}"

Or you can download the .reg file here: ifolder-shell-disable.reg

I've loved using Dropbox. It's small, quick, and unintrusive. You install it and it does its thing in the background, without any user interaction. Dropbox has released iPhone/iPad and Android clients, and the "public" sharing option is excellent. I'm currently using Dropbox to synchronize some documents, things I need to read from my iPhone, small files I wish to share with friends/co-workers, Filezillla sitemanager.xml files, etc.

My only complaint is that there's not more space available for free. :) Their plans are rather reasonable ($99/yr for 50GB)... just a little too rich for what I would expect for that type of service.

I've been looking at different file synchronization programs, but nothing has jumped out as the perfect solution, until now.

iFolder is an open-source project originally created by Novell and still available as part of their Open Enterprise Server product. It has quite a few similarities with Dropbox, with the added benefit of being able to run my own server at home, provide as much disk space as I wanted, and get the LAN-based synchronization solution I was looking for.

I currently have a virtual machine image of a SuSe Linux server running the iFolder service and have synchronization with virtually unlimited space (only limited to the size & number of drives I throw in the iFolder server).

My next post will be more of a "how-to" which will walk you through downloading, configuring, and using iFolder... The information's out there on the Internet, but nothing in an "all in one page" that I've found so far.