5 ms·

I had similar issues years ago and it was frustrating. What I do now is have syncthing on a 'server' that is always on and everything syncs to the server and no

I had similar issues years ago and it was frustrating. What I do now is have syncthing on a 'server' that is always on and everything syncs to the server and not between each device. That reduced my conflicts by 99%. Another issue I had was accidentally deleting a folder and having it deleted off of all my devices. To solve that issue I have my server do ZFS snapshots on my syncthing folder, which makes for easy recovery. With those 2 things being done, I can't say enough good things about syncthing. Compared to nextcloud it is almost maintenance free.

EGreg 2y ago
Why not just use rsync -a periodically over an encrypted ssh connection? It works across Mac/Linux etc. and is just as efficient, no? If you really want to be fancy, you can deploy a script to watch files for changes and do rsync immediately when it happene.
- dmd 2y ago
  You can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    Not sure why this would be easier or better FTP is not encrypted. Unless you use SFTP maybe. (I wrote an SFTP and FTP-over-SSH client in Visual Basic like 20 yesrs ago lol). And even then, you miss out on all the optimizations with prolly trees and other goodness that rsync has. No, sorry, that solution sucks. CVS? That’s super outdated.
    - fallingsquirrel 2y ago
      It's a reference to the infamous dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Anyways, if you're at the grocery store and you need to see your shopping list, and you're happy with your current workflow of opening up Termux and typing `rsync -avrsomgwtfbbq me@server/shopping-list.txt` with your thumbs, then by all means keep doing that! For the rest of us, there's Syncthing.
      - EGreg 2y ago
        Yeah but on the substance, none of your countrexamples make sense SyncThing doesnt actually have an iOS client that syncs reliably. I tried some, when I was test driving it and Resilio Sync and others. https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045 On your phone you’d probably just visit a website, and access your server via HTTP.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  > If you really want to be fancy, you can deploy a script to watch files for changes and do rsync immediately when it happene. I use a tool that does that, it's called Syncthing.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    Yeah but if you’re just syncing everything to and from a server anyway, why bother with it? Plus, rsync -a never deletes files.
    - ta2234234242 2y ago
      Plus why doesn't sync thing support rsync protocols anyway? It's not like it couldn't, right?
    - vetinari 2y ago
      Because you want syncthing to delete files more often than not. When you want the reverse, it's a single property on the shared folder (ignoreDelete), feel free to set it.
      - zelphirkalt 2y ago
        Is that ignoreDelete a Syncthing setting or something on the file system?
        vetinari 2y ago
        Syncthing setting, per shared directory: https://docs.syncthing.net/advanced/folder-ignoredelete.html https://docs.syncthing.net/advanced/folder-ignoredelete.html
- soupbowl 2y ago
  I sync files across Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and Android. Your solution wouldn't work for me as easily as Syncthing.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  They're not the same thing. rsync is unidirectional, and only between two endpoints. One side is always overwritten by the other side. syncthing is bidirectional, syncing changes in either direction, and supports syncing any number of clients, not just two. Watching and syncing immediately - yes, that's what syncthing does. Why reinvent it with something worse?
- boring_twenties 2y ago
  That isn't going to handle possibly conflicting changes from more than one source.
ta988 2y ago
Syncthing has staggered versioning that keeps several versions at different timepoints this may have solved that issue.

EGreg 2y ago

Why not just use rsync -a periodically over an encrypted ssh connection? It works across Mac/Linux etc. and is just as efficient, no? If you really want to be fancy, you can deploy a script to watch files for changes and do rsync immediately when it happene.

dmd 2y ago
You can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Not sure why this would be easier or better FTP is not encrypted. Unless you use SFTP maybe. (I wrote an SFTP and FTP-over-SSH client in Visual Basic like 20 yesrs ago lol). And even then, you miss out on all the optimizations with prolly trees and other goodness that rsync has. No, sorry, that solution sucks. CVS? That’s super outdated.
  - fallingsquirrel 2y ago
    It's a reference to the infamous dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Anyways, if you're at the grocery store and you need to see your shopping list, and you're happy with your current workflow of opening up Termux and typing `rsync -avrsomgwtfbbq me@server/shopping-list.txt` with your thumbs, then by all means keep doing that! For the rest of us, there's Syncthing.
    - EGreg 2y ago
      Yeah but on the substance, none of your countrexamples make sense SyncThing doesnt actually have an iOS client that syncs reliably. I tried some, when I was test driving it and Resilio Sync and others. https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045 On your phone you’d probably just visit a website, and access your server via HTTP.
aniviacat 2y ago
> If you really want to be fancy, you can deploy a script to watch files for changes and do rsync immediately when it happene. I use a tool that does that, it's called Syncthing.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Yeah but if you’re just syncing everything to and from a server anyway, why bother with it? Plus, rsync -a never deletes files.
  - ta2234234242 2y ago
    Plus why doesn't sync thing support rsync protocols anyway? It's not like it couldn't, right?
  - vetinari 2y ago
    Because you want syncthing to delete files more often than not. When you want the reverse, it's a single property on the shared folder (ignoreDelete), feel free to set it.
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      Is that ignoreDelete a Syncthing setting or something on the file system?
      - vetinari 2y ago
        Syncthing setting, per shared directory: https://docs.syncthing.net/advanced/folder-ignoredelete.html https://docs.syncthing.net/advanced/folder-ignoredelete.html
soupbowl 2y ago
I sync files across Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and Android. Your solution wouldn't work for me as easily as Syncthing.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
They're not the same thing. rsync is unidirectional, and only between two endpoints. One side is always overwritten by the other side. syncthing is bidirectional, syncing changes in either direction, and supports syncing any number of clients, not just two. Watching and syncing immediately - yes, that's what syncthing does. Why reinvent it with something worse?
boring_twenties 2y ago
That isn't going to handle possibly conflicting changes from more than one source.

ta988 2y ago

Syncthing has staggered versioning that keeps several versions at different timepoints this may have solved that issue.