7 ms·

An active FOSS alternative to this is Syncthing. https://github.com/syncthing https://github.com/syncthing

by rocky1138 11y ago

samwestdev 11y ago
any good?
- jhasse 11y ago
  Yes! But it's decentralized. An alternative to Ubuntu One would be ownCloud (https://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/).
  - bildung 11y ago
    Another alternative is Seafile https://www.seafile.com/en/download/ https://www.seafile.com/en/download/
  - mrschwabe 11y ago
    And yet another alternative, nodejs based: http://cozy.io http://cozy.io
  - ef4 11y ago
    Centralized is just a degenerate case of decentralized. Stand up a dedicated server running syncthing and poof!, you have a centralized syncthing.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      synch Thing is really a good option. It has a good community that is actively supporting the product and the features include only syncing certain files is great. I was a former Bit Torret Sync user but switch due to its open source code.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- rocky1138 11y ago
  Yes. It's very good. I've been using it for about 4 months now between a Raspberry Pi (Raspbian Linux), an old laptop (Ubuntu Linux), my main computer (Windows 8.1), and my girlfriend's computer (Windows 8.1).
- pedrocr 11y ago
  It's usable if you have a small amount of files. For anything serious (say 100k files or 500GB of data) is blows through CPU and RAM to the point of being unusable. I've been actively testing several and there is currently no actually good open-source solution in this space.
  - rocky1138 11y ago
    I've got about 150GB (but well over 100k files) and it only really lags on the Raspberry Pi. One thing I could suggest is that you change how often it rescans your directories for changes (I set mine to 6000 seconds versus the default 60). That might make a difference.
    - pedrocr 11y ago
      I've explored this pretty extensively and it's currently just the way it is. It happens from first sync so the rescan interval makes no difference. Your collection probably requires 300-400MB of RAM to sync so it should be on the cusp of failing on a raspberry pi. Here's the bug report that was closed without any fix: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468 And user reports of this show up pretty often: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/arm-linux-cpu-usage-99-for-many-hours-with-no-progress-on-syncing/5322 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/arm-linux-cpu-usage-99-for-man... https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 A sync tool that uses on the order 2MB of RAM per GB of files or 4kB per file isn't really usable. A cheap NAS these days can easily have 6TB of RAID6 storage but it won't have 12GB of RAM. Clearly something in syncthing is keeping way too much stuff pinned in memory and the developers so far haven't focused on that. There's no apparent need for this memory usage either as there's already an on-disk database with the state of the sync folder.
      - rocky1138 11y ago
        That's really interesting, thanks.
- stewbrew 11y ago
  Yes. It's easy to install and runs on Android. It's quite fast in detecting differences and then syncing 2 nodes. It's meant to permanently run in the background though. It cannot be not easyly automated to, eg, sync 2 nodes and then shut down. In case if concurrent edits, you end up with multiple versions of the file on disk. You have to somehow detect those conflicts (find) and merge the files yourself. It doesn't help you much with that.
scott_karana 11y ago
How does it handle conflicts?
- 83a 11y ago
  http://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there-is-a-conflict http://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there-is-a-... > When a file has been modified on two devices > simultaneously, one of the files will be renamed to > <filename>.sync- conflict-<date>-<time>.<ext>.
- rocky1138 11y ago
  I haven't had too many. About the same as Dropbox, I think. From memory, I believe it appends -conflicted-BLABLA's-copy or some such to the filename. Conveniently, it has a built-in backup system you can enable that keeps the last 'n' copies of files. I've got mine set to 5 so even if something goes horribly wrong, I can fetch from the backup.
  - rahimnathwani 11y ago
    I would still worry without offline backups. Malware or a malicious actor could delete the built-in backups from _all_ sync'ed devices by modifying each file 6 times.
hiq 11y ago
I love Syncthing. I used to use Dropbox and then ownCloud on a VPS, but so far Syncthing has been the perfect replacement to regain complete control of my data.
amatriain 11y ago
I really like the philosophy of the project and the guys running it, but my recent experience trying to use it as a dropbox replacement has been bad: machines that stayed "syncing..." forever, deleted files that reappeared after a while, renamed folders resulting in duplicated folders with both the old and the new name... I think it's just that the software is not yet mature and production-ready, and perhaps I was throwing too much data at it at once. Seeing the project progress, I'm confident that when it becomes more stable it will be a very nice piece of software, but it's not there yet.
- pit 11y ago
  Completely agree. Compare to BitTorrent Sync, which is proprietary but works perfectly out of the box. [1] [1] Okay, this is true for BitTorrent Sync versions < 1.4 -- more recent versions have been less reliable, particularly with regards to cross-platform syncing.
- johnmaguire2013 11y ago
  I've actually found the opposite. One of my coworkers and I are disappointed by a lot of syncing software out there, and began using SyncThing. We haven't experienced any bugs so long as we both keep our versions in sync. Once one has a later version than the other, all bets are off. That's a problem that's tricky to solve correctly though. Aside from that, we were disappointed by the constant needs to restart SyncThing when saving configuration changes, some lack of UX features (e.g. being able to move where your sync share is stored -- I made an issue on Github and was told to edit the config file manually and restart SyncThing -- I asked if a pull request would be accepted if I added the feature myself, and got a vague response.) Overall though, SyncThing has worked excellently for us.
- proactivesvcs 11y ago
  IME they are helpful at diagnosis and troubleshooting, as long as the user is willing to put similar effort to providing details and debugging.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Not sure what is causing your bad experience. Are you using an up-to-date version? I have been deploying it across 4 different computers and it works like a charm.
johnchristopher 11y ago
Also: http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/ but it seems unmaintained.
lewisl9029 11y ago
I use Syncthing for most of my cross-device sync'ing, but I haven't yet found a good FOSS solution for sync'ing locally (local folder to external hdd, mp3 player, another local folder, etc). There were a few posts on the Syncthing forums requesting it as a feature but they didn't really get anywhere: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/possibility-to-sync-local-folder/131/4 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/possibility-to-sync-local-fold... In the mean time, I'm using GoodSync for sync'ing locally: http://www.goodsync.com/download http://www.goodsync.com/download It works quite well for that purpose, but since it's proprietary I'm not comfortable with blindly trusting it to sync my important files over the internet. Still waiting for that perfect open-source p2p sync app that can also do local sync'ing.
- aroch 11y ago
  What about git-annex[1], duplicity[2] or bup[3]? I personally use duplicity to make versioned backups of my homedir (on OSX, debian and Arch machines) and keep versioned dropbox-like backups via owncloud. My homedir backups are GPG encrypted automatically. 1: https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/ 2: http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ 3: https://github.com/bup/bup https://github.com/bup/bup
  - ausjke 11y ago
    duplicity with gpg is good idea for backup and security, but probably difficult to deal with large amount of binary data(pictures,family videos) up to, say 2TB.
    - aroch 11y ago
      No? If only does deltas, presumably you aren't changing all the files very often. My largest duplicity backup is, ~800GB. With 24h of hourly snapshots, 1 month of daily snapshots, and 1 year of monthly snapshots, the actual backup currently takes ~5TB. It only increases in ~1-10GB/day
- flarg 11y ago
  Unison File Synchronizer is made for you! http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

An active FOSS alternative to this is Syncthing. https://github.com/syncthing https://github.com/syncthing

samwestdev 11y ago

any good?

jhasse 11y ago
Yes! But it's decentralized. An alternative to Ubuntu One would be ownCloud (https://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/).
- bildung 11y ago
  Another alternative is Seafile https://www.seafile.com/en/download/ https://www.seafile.com/en/download/
- mrschwabe 11y ago
  And yet another alternative, nodejs based: http://cozy.io http://cozy.io
- ef4 11y ago
  Centralized is just a degenerate case of decentralized. Stand up a dedicated server running syncthing and poof!, you have a centralized syncthing.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    synch Thing is really a good option. It has a good community that is actively supporting the product and the features include only syncing certain files is great. I was a former Bit Torret Sync user but switch due to its open source code.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rocky1138 11y ago
Yes. It's very good. I've been using it for about 4 months now between a Raspberry Pi (Raspbian Linux), an old laptop (Ubuntu Linux), my main computer (Windows 8.1), and my girlfriend's computer (Windows 8.1).
pedrocr 11y ago
It's usable if you have a small amount of files. For anything serious (say 100k files or 500GB of data) is blows through CPU and RAM to the point of being unusable. I've been actively testing several and there is currently no actually good open-source solution in this space.
- rocky1138 11y ago
  I've got about 150GB (but well over 100k files) and it only really lags on the Raspberry Pi. One thing I could suggest is that you change how often it rescans your directories for changes (I set mine to 6000 seconds versus the default 60). That might make a difference.
  - pedrocr 11y ago
    I've explored this pretty extensively and it's currently just the way it is. It happens from first sync so the rescan interval makes no difference. Your collection probably requires 300-400MB of RAM to sync so it should be on the cusp of failing on a raspberry pi. Here's the bug report that was closed without any fix: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468 And user reports of this show up pretty often: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/arm-linux-cpu-usage-99-for-many-hours-with-no-progress-on-syncing/5322 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/arm-linux-cpu-usage-99-for-man... https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/1841 A sync tool that uses on the order 2MB of RAM per GB of files or 4kB per file isn't really usable. A cheap NAS these days can easily have 6TB of RAID6 storage but it won't have 12GB of RAM. Clearly something in syncthing is keeping way too much stuff pinned in memory and the developers so far haven't focused on that. There's no apparent need for this memory usage either as there's already an on-disk database with the state of the sync folder.
    - rocky1138 11y ago
      That's really interesting, thanks.
stewbrew 11y ago
Yes. It's easy to install and runs on Android. It's quite fast in detecting differences and then syncing 2 nodes. It's meant to permanently run in the background though. It cannot be not easyly automated to, eg, sync 2 nodes and then shut down. In case if concurrent edits, you end up with multiple versions of the file on disk. You have to somehow detect those conflicts (find) and merge the files yourself. It doesn't help you much with that.

scott_karana 11y ago

How does it handle conflicts?

83a 11y ago
http://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there-is-a-conflict http://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there-is-a-... > When a file has been modified on two devices > simultaneously, one of the files will be renamed to > <filename>.sync- conflict-<date>-<time>.<ext>.
rocky1138 11y ago
I haven't had too many. About the same as Dropbox, I think. From memory, I believe it appends -conflicted-BLABLA's-copy or some such to the filename. Conveniently, it has a built-in backup system you can enable that keeps the last 'n' copies of files. I've got mine set to 5 so even if something goes horribly wrong, I can fetch from the backup.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  I would still worry without offline backups. Malware or a malicious actor could delete the built-in backups from _all_ sync'ed devices by modifying each file 6 times.

hiq 11y ago

I love Syncthing. I used to use Dropbox and then ownCloud on a VPS, but so far Syncthing has been the perfect replacement to regain complete control of my data.

amatriain 11y ago

I really like the philosophy of the project and the guys running it, but my recent experience trying to use it as a dropbox replacement has been bad: machines that stayed "syncing..." forever, deleted files that reappeared after a while, renamed folders resulting in duplicated folders with both the old and the new name... I think it's just that the software is not yet mature and production-ready, and perhaps I was throwing too much data at it at once. Seeing the project progress, I'm confident that when it becomes more stable it will be a very nice piece of software, but it's not there yet.

pit 11y ago
Completely agree. Compare to BitTorrent Sync, which is proprietary but works perfectly out of the box. [1] [1] Okay, this is true for BitTorrent Sync versions < 1.4 -- more recent versions have been less reliable, particularly with regards to cross-platform syncing.
johnmaguire2013 11y ago
I've actually found the opposite. One of my coworkers and I are disappointed by a lot of syncing software out there, and began using SyncThing. We haven't experienced any bugs so long as we both keep our versions in sync. Once one has a later version than the other, all bets are off. That's a problem that's tricky to solve correctly though. Aside from that, we were disappointed by the constant needs to restart SyncThing when saving configuration changes, some lack of UX features (e.g. being able to move where your sync share is stored -- I made an issue on Github and was told to edit the config file manually and restart SyncThing -- I asked if a pull request would be accepted if I added the feature myself, and got a vague response.) Overall though, SyncThing has worked excellently for us.
proactivesvcs 11y ago
IME they are helpful at diagnosis and troubleshooting, as long as the user is willing to put similar effort to providing details and debugging.
ekianjo 11y ago
Not sure what is causing your bad experience. Are you using an up-to-date version? I have been deploying it across 4 different computers and it works like a charm.

johnchristopher 11y ago

Also: http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/ but it seems unmaintained.

lewisl9029 11y ago

I use Syncthing for most of my cross-device sync'ing, but I haven't yet found a good FOSS solution for sync'ing locally (local folder to external hdd, mp3 player, another local folder, etc). There were a few posts on the Syncthing forums requesting it as a feature but they didn't really get anywhere: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/possibility-to-sync-local-folder/131/4 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/possibility-to-sync-local-fold... In the mean time, I'm using GoodSync for sync'ing locally: http://www.goodsync.com/download http://www.goodsync.com/download It works quite well for that purpose, but since it's proprietary I'm not comfortable with blindly trusting it to sync my important files over the internet. Still waiting for that perfect open-source p2p sync app that can also do local sync'ing.

aroch 11y ago
What about git-annex[1], duplicity[2] or bup[3]? I personally use duplicity to make versioned backups of my homedir (on OSX, debian and Arch machines) and keep versioned dropbox-like backups via owncloud. My homedir backups are GPG encrypted automatically. 1: https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/ 2: http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ 3: https://github.com/bup/bup https://github.com/bup/bup
- ausjke 11y ago
  duplicity with gpg is good idea for backup and security, but probably difficult to deal with large amount of binary data(pictures,family videos) up to, say 2TB.
  - aroch 11y ago
    No? If only does deltas, presumably you aren't changing all the files very often. My largest duplicity backup is, ~800GB. With 24h of hourly snapshots, 1 month of daily snapshots, and 1 year of monthly snapshots, the actual backup currently takes ~5TB. It only increases in ~1-10GB/day
flarg 11y ago
Unison File Synchronizer is made for you! http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/