Codes divers: HubicGTK

About

HubicGTK is a system tray icon for hubiC, the online storage service by OVH SAS.

It draws its inspiration from the bundled Dropbox system tray icon.

It is developped in pygtk, thus it depends on python2, gtk2, dbus, xdg and notify bindings for python. It is released under the terms of the WTF Public License

Get it

The last version is 0.5. You can get it here

Usage

The program should run out of the box. Just type the following commands:

$ tar xzf hubic-gtk-x.x.x.tar.gz
$ cd hubic-gtk
$ ./hubic-gtk.py

If you want to install it system wide, you can use the provided Makefile:

$ sudo make

$ make build
$ su -
# cd /previous/extracted/path
# make install

And start it with the hubic-gtk command.

You can install it elsewhere if needed, just pass the target root as a parameter to make. For example:

$ make build DEST=~/.local
$ make install DEST=~/.local
$ .local/bin/hubic-gtk &

$ make build DEST=/opt/hubic-gtk
$ sudo make install DEST=/opt/hubic-gtk
$ /opt/hubic-gtk/bin/hubic-gtk &

Configuration

HubicGTK use a per-user configuration file located in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/hubiC/status_icon.conf. It is a generic configuration file, which follows this structure:

[general]
notify = True
hubic_dir = ~/Hubic

[much_secret_wow_not_see]
encfs_config = ~/.config/.myhubicsecret.encfs6.xml
encfs_passfile = ~/.config/.myhubicsecret.encfs.pass
mount_point = ~/Private/Hubic

The general section refers to preferences of the status icon. Any other section must refer to as many existing encfs containers.

The program does not depend on this per-user configuration file. If no config file is found for the current user or if a configuration option is missing in your configuration file, the program follows its default rules, which are:

[general]
notify = False
show_all_message = False
file_browser = xdg-open {0}
prefix_unit = binary

Your default hubic_dir is retrieved from dbus at first run.

General section

The notify option specifies if notification bubbles should be shown for each hubiC events. The default value is True, but as it may generate a lot of noise, you can set it to false to deactivate it. Please note it is an intended behaviour that the program still notify you about encfs events, even if this option is set to False. You can also set this option by toggling the Show notification messages checkbox in the Last messages submenu.
The show_all_messages restrains the last messages submenu to the last 10 messages if it is set to False.
The hubic_dir option specifies the path to your synchronized folder. This is an attempt to not make a dbus call when the programme start to find this path, as this single dbus call will consecutively start hubiC. If this option is not set, the first time the program ask hubiC to indicates its path, the later is saved for future usage and a configuration file is created if needed.
The prefix_unit option specifies the file size unit used through the application. For now it could be decimal or anything else. In this last case, the fallback or default mode is binary prefix.
The file_browser option overwrite the default use of xdg_open to open parent folder of synchronised files appearing in the status messages.

Encfs sections

As we lived in a world where citizen censorship and mass surveillance is common, it is a good practice to crypt our private data. Many different systems exist, like TrueCrypt or EncFS. I chose to add encfs features to this program as it is, at my sense, the most practical way to crypt data on such cloud storage services.

By the way, the aim of HubicGTK is NOT to help you create encfs container, but just to help you mounting these containers. To do so, just add the correct sections to your configuration file and the corresponding enfs volume will show up in the hubiC status menu.

The name of the configuration file's section must be the relative path to your hubiC synchronised folder. Given ~/Hubic being your hubiC synchronized folder, if your encfs container is stored in ~/Hubic/my_private_folder, the section name must be [my_private_folder]. If it is in ~/Hubic/Documents/very_secret, the section name must be [Documents/very_secret].

For each of your encfs containers, the following options are available:

mount_point: the path to a folder, which will be used as a mount point. This folder must exist and must be empty.
open_folder_at_mount: indicates if the program should open your private folder just after having mounted it or not. It uses xdg-open or the value of the file_browser option in the general section.
encfs_config: the path to the encfs config file. It is good practice to store it anyway but NOT in a cloud synchronized place. If you want to share an encfs folder between two different devices, copy this file on an usb stick and put it somewhere in your profile directories.
encfs_passphrase: the secret phrase to uncrypt your encfs container. Obviously this phrase will not be encrypted in the HubicGTK config file, so use it with big precaution.
encfs_passfile: the path to a file containing only your encfs secret pass phrase. The file content must not be encrypted as its content is directly passed to the encfs command line. To enforce the security on this file, you can do a chmod 600 mysecretfile on it to prevent any other user of your computer to access its content.
if neither a encfs_passphrase, nor an encfs_passfile option is present in your config file, HubicGTK will prompt you for a password each time you will mount an encfs container. It is the safer option if you do not want to keep your secret pass phrase written somewhere in your computer.

Here is a complete example of an encfs section, regarding a container staying in ~/Hubic/much_secret_wow_not_see:

[much_secret_wow_not_see]
encfs_config = ~/.config/.myhubicsecret.encfs6.xml
encfs_passfile = ~/.config/.myhubicsecret.encfs.pass
mount_point = ~/Private/Hubic

Contributions

All contributions are welcome. Just clone take the code and do WTF you want with.

A special attention will be given to any translation help. You can either:

download the main .pot file or
ask to become member of the project on transifex (all demands will be honoured)