14 ms·

Syncthing: Open Source Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync Replacement

623 points by ushi 12y ago

binaryanomaly 12y ago
Let's hope this becomes what it is promising and reliefs me of dropbox and the likes... ;)
- clementmiao 12y ago
  I'm curious, what are your complaints about Dropbox? Security, UI, UX, features?
r0muald 12y ago
A better title would be "Syncthing, an open source Dropbox replacement written in Go". But seriously, it seems promising.
JonAtkinson 12y ago
I just setup Sparkleshare (http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/) this weekend. I wanted something which wasn't Dropbox, and preferably open-source, and while Sparkleshare has a slightly clunky pair mechanism, it works beautifully. Syncthing looks similar, and LAN sync'ing is a killer feature for those of us in offices with poor bandwidth.
- marlin 12y ago
  Dropbox actually have a "Sync over LAN" checkbox. It just never seem to been implemented/enabled. I actually just dropped Dropbox for btsync the other week and are very happy, it's iOS app even serves other clients with files over LAN. Btsync however uses quite crappy crypto and is closed source etc etc. Syncthing mentions they use TLS encryption, hopefully i can roll my own 8k keys. I tried Sparkleshare last year aswell, but my experience was mixed. Also it relies on quite a different architecture (git) than a "versioning bittorrent protocol". Looking forward to evaluating syncthing when time permits.
  - Shorel 12y ago
    How come? I have seen it working.
    - marlin 12y ago
      Thats curious. I never got it working between Windows, Linux and Mac clients. Sorry for drawing conclusions.
  - NDizzle 12y ago
    Isn't it always enabled by default?! The last few times I've set up a new machine locally I've used Dropbox to pull over stuff. It usually moves at 40-50 MB/s (megabytes) which is certainly using my gigabit LAN.
    - marlin 12y ago
      According to [1], "LAN sync" only works when file has already been uploaded to the dropbox servers. If this is accurate, then I guess this is the issue i have noticed. 1: https://superuser.com/questions/663600/set-dropbox-to-only-use-lan-sync-dont-allow-web-sync https://superuser.com/questions/663600/set-dropbox-to-only-u... UPDATE: Confirmed by [2], that Dropbox LAN sync indeed only works once the file reached their servers. "Well, when you add a file to your computer's Dropbox, the file is then synced with Dropbox servers. Dropbox will then initiate the syncing process as soon as it determines a change has been made to the file. All linked computers and shared folders will then download any new version of the file. With LAN syncing, Dropbox will look for the new file on your Local Area Network first, bypassing the need to download the file from Dropbox servers, thus speeding up the syncing process considerably." 2: https://www.dropbox.com/help/137/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/137/en
      - nodata 12y ago
        For anyone wondering, Dropbox changed this a while back. The requirement to sync to Dropbox first was added at that point.
      - 12y ago
- Karunamon 12y ago
  I never had much luck with Sparkleshare - in particular, I got burned by it a couple times when files I placed in the shared folder never got synchronized and I was not notified of this anywhere. Get to office, and oh crap my files weren't there..
aw3c2 12y ago
This looks very promising. But the documentation is not good. I have not managed to find a "1 minute" friendly overview of how it works. I mean, what data gets sent how where and why.
- ushi 12y ago
  It is a very young project (pre v1.0) - so give it some time. You can read about the protocol here[0]. [0] https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
- nodata 12y ago
  > But the documentation is not good. The linked website is aimed at end-users. Try the protocol docs: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
  - aw3c2 12y ago
    On, I meant end-user friendly documentation. Like ushi said, it is probably too early for that. Thanks!
    - nodata 12y ago
      You could try the discourse site: http://discourse.syncthing.net/category/documentation http://discourse.syncthing.net/category/documentation
      - aw3c2 12y ago
        I did, it drowned me in other things. ;-)
- johnwyles 12y ago
  someone above posted this: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
alyandon 12y ago
I can't really seem to find this information in the documentation. Does this support delta/block-level sync for large files (e.g.: does mounting a 100 GB truecrypt container, modifying a file inside the container and unmounting it cause the entire 100 GB container to be uploaded)? Does it utilize the native OS platform APIs for detecting file modification (e.g. inotify on linux) as opposed to scanning/polling large directories looking for modified date changes?
- nodata 12y ago
  Protocol information is linked from the homepage: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT... > Does this support delta/block-level sync for large files Yes. > Does it utilize the native OS platform APIs for detecting file modification It uses polling. Edit: inotify issue is here: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 (the author seems to want to implement this feature once go has a decent cross-platform file watching library)
  - alyandon 12y ago
    Thanks for the quick response. I just got through reading PROTOCOL.md and was about to update my post.
- johnwyles 12y ago
  Aside: I was wondering this about Bittorrent Sync as well - would you happen to know?
- marlin 12y ago
  EDIT: i realized i answered about btsync while question was about syncthing, sorry. Regarding detecting file modifications: my friend had issues with his synology diskstation eating 100% cpu with btsync with around 50k files. With less files it was down to 20%. We never debugged it properly but it may be polling issues, but it could also have been out of ram-swapping issues (512MB ram was not enough). Others have reported issues with many files: https://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/23802-syncing-600gb-10-million-files-recommend-settings/ https://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/23802-syncing-600gb-10-mi...
simbolit 12y ago
I use http://owncloud.org http://owncloud.org and am quite happy. But also happy for more competition :-)
- aram 12y ago
  No matter how much I tried, I always had crappy experience using OwnCloud (-> very slow to recognize new files and sync them across other computers). I tried it maybe 4-5 times in total, last time just couple of weeks ago. Does it work fast for you? Do you use desktop client or primarily web GUI?
  - josteink 12y ago
    I tried it too, but ended up replacing it with something else. It was slow as a pig, was unable to handle datasync with failures and timeouts on any reasonable amount of files (a 2000 file user) and constantly made my CPU fan hit max. My server was a Core i7 with 12GBs of RAM, SSD backing and a more or less dedicated NAS. I tried with both SQLite and MySQL backing. MySQL was better, but still unacceptable. If that's not enough to run it for a single user, I can't imagine what it's like trying to deploy it for a full family, even less an organization. I love the idea behind owncloud, and I admit touting it myself in my own "honeymoon phase", but in hindsight I have no problem admitting that the execution is just too poor.
    - aram 12y ago
      Same experience. I tried it on DO droplets (1, 2, 4 and then 16GB of RAM to see if I'm nuts), computer I'm working on (16GB RAM) and from a RPi (that was for fun though). Every single time it was painfully slow. It took it about 1h to sync a folder with about 100 files, under 30MB total across 4 computers. Not to mention that minor modifications appeared only after 15 minutes (small text files). BTSync worked great, but I wouldn't trust it with something sensitive. What did you end up using?
      - josteink 12y ago
        > What did you end up using? Long story short, I went from an "all cloud" (Google + Dropbox) setup to a "all mine, no NSA" setup. Now I've decided that counter zealotry doesn't have that much for it, and I'll try to balance privacy with best of breed services, without trying to end up with all my eggs in one basket. Not doing that ensures I keep interop and portability in mind. My end-result is calendar via Google (only solution I can get collaboration and invites working properly), files via Dropbox, mail with Fastmail (much better than Gmail) and contacts via Baikal on my own hosted server. Fastmail is adding support for calendering and contacts via CalDAV and CardDAV, but I've yet to fully investigate that. It's a moving target for me, but currently it's been stable for a few months, and I'm mostly happy.
XorNot 12y ago
Can we please please please make it a standard that synchronization tools spell out how they handle conflicts on the front page. Bittorrent Sync just overwrites files based on last mod time (terrible option). What does this do? Does it support backups? Versioning?
- ape4 12y ago
  Their protocol is published https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
  - saurik 12y ago
    I think the point is also "this is actually critical information that is important for end users of the system to understand, not esoteric knowledge only required by developers".
- ushi 12y ago
  I learned about Syncthing here[0]. The article mentions that there is no versioning at the moment. [0] http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2014/05/10/syncthing/ http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2014/05/10/syncthing/
- nodata 12y ago
  Newest change wins. More detail: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/61#issue-27202590 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/61#issue-27202590
  - nightpool 12y ago
    Specifically, this is not dependent on last mod time, but instead a "version" field in each file's metadata that is incremented every time a file changes. I'm not really sure how that's going to help with concurrent (or conflicting) edits though.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  What does Dropbox do?
nvk 12y ago
That's great news, have been looking for a OSS sync app for quite some time.
Wilya 12y ago
That looks like a promising project in a space which definitely needs improvement. Owncloud and Sparkleshare are okay, but they are far from perfect, and there is large room for improvement.
chrisBob 12y ago
I am very happy with the timemachine backup on my mac, but I have been looking for a good offsite backup solution so that I can trade storage with my family in case something happens to my house. This might finally be the right option. BT Sync seemed ok, but was more than I wanted my parents to try and setup.
- ant512 12y ago
  Try CrashPlan: http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ It's free for peer-to-peer backup and is designed to do exactly what you want.
  - slight 12y ago
    Their cloud storage for backups is really cheap if you have a lot to back up and want them to handle your off-site too.
  - chrisBob 12y ago
    Thanks. That looks like a good fit, and the paid plans are probably less than I would spend on a set of external drives anyway. I will give it a try.
frabcus 12y ago
Fancy being interviewed for http://redecentralize.org/ http://redecentralize.org/ ? If so, email me francis@redecentralize.org! (I couldn't see an email or contact form for you on the syncthing site)
- ushi 12y ago
  You can find an email at the authors GitHub profile[0]. https://github.com/calmh https://github.com/calmh
  - frabcus 12y ago
    Thanks!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
stinos 12y ago
Since we're listing alternatives here: I setup SeaFile (http://seafile.com/ http://seafile.com/) a couple of months ago and I'm loving it so far. Mainly because it has client-side encryption and allows a single client to sync with different servers and selectively choose which 'libraries' (basically directories that are under sync) to use. Typical usecase is having a personal server for personal files and another one at the office for work-related stuff.
- nodata 12y ago
  I couldn't decipher what SeaFile was or how all the components fitted together, can you recommend a review or write-up?
  - mverwijs 12y ago
    Components overview: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki/Seafile-server-components-overview https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki/Seafile-server-compon... (Installed it yesterday on a debian LXC)
- dcalacci 12y ago
  I use seafile as well - I host it on my digital ocean instance and it works very well and things sync very quickly. best part is that it does automatic, granular snapshots of my data - I've stopped using git for things like papers because I know it's backed up in seafile.
- naiyt 12y ago
  I've been using Seafile for a few weeks as well, and have been pretty impressed. It's been a better experience then ownCloud, for me. Having an open source syncing service with client side encryption is great.
- pestaa 12y ago
  Very much agreed. Seafile absolutely blows ownCloud out of the water.
  - 12y ago
twosheep 12y ago
So this may be as good a thread as any to ask for assistance: My small business is looking for a combined file collaboration / file backup service that doesn't cost an excessive amount of money (we're a non-profit on a budget). Is there a good service for this? For example, Dropbox is mainly for sharing files, whereas Carbonite is mostly for backing up your computer. Is there a solution for both?
- encoded 12y ago
  SpiderOak does both. Their interface is, IMO, not nearly as good as Dropbox (I've never used carbonite), but it does check both boxes (backup and sharing/sync).
  - twosheep 12y ago
    Yeah but SpiderOak is $5/user/MONTH, so with 30 employees we're looking at $1800/year which is just crazy.
- vitovito 12y ago
  Basedrive might do it; it's an actual local server running their platform which you backup to/collaborate on, that you buy, rather than a service. http://basedrive.me http://basedrive.me
taterbase 12y ago
Git-Annex is a great existing option (made by joeyhess). https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/
- rsync 12y ago
  This is a year or so old, but it still works for new customers: http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Can you explain to me why and how I would use git-annex for real time sync? From what I understand of it, it works well for backups and for managing media files, but I don't understand how it handles the use case of making two directories on two computers pretend to be one.
  - prutschman 12y ago
    git-annex assistant, by the same author, builds automatic synchronization on top of git-annex: https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
- Yen 12y ago
  I once gave git-annex a serious try (a few weekends of all-day efforts), as a way of sharing my music library between personal machines. It seemed to fail pretty hard on the cross-platform part. I really wanted it to work, I just couldn't get it to do so. It was great at first on a single Linux machine, but once I had to support Windows, things became much more complicated. Most of this I attribute to Windows - different filename character restrictions, no usable symlinks, git only kinda-sorta supported through cygwin. Setting up an SSH server under Windows was something I didn't want to do, and HTTP sync was pretty buggy (different hashing schemes between the two computers, for some reason). If things have gotten better, or someone's written a good tutorial on having an actual decentralized repo shared between Windows and Linux machines, I'd be interested in giving it another go. Also might need to hack up a mobile app. I haven't dug into Syncthing's protocol yet, but I also like the idea of being able to easily share a single sync'd folder or file with an outside person, but not having to point them at a full repository.
rsync 12y ago
Here is the original from a year or so ago: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Set_up_your_own_truly_secure_encrypted_shared_storage_aka_Dropbox_clone.html https://raymii.org/s/articles/Set_up_your_own_truly_secure_e... "Then all current commercial services drop off, including SpiderOak, Bittorrent Sync and git-annex. This resulted in a clever combination of EncFS and dvcs-autosync. Because, in this day and age, you cannot trust any "cloud" provider with your unencrypted data."
- icebraining 12y ago
  The author was uninformed, though. git-annex has supported encryption for special remotes (including your own rsync.net) since the early beginning (the wiki page[1] has been there since 2011). And it's certainly open source. [1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/encryption/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/encryption/
Karunamon 12y ago
How good is this at traversing firewalls? AFAIK, Dropbox will do some manner of HTTP trickery to allow syncing when behind overly-restrictive firewalls (so it just goes out the usually-provided web proxy), but the documentation here references forwarding ports + UPNP, so I'm guessing that doesn't apply here?
pjkundert 12y ago
Has anyone else taken a look at Ori (http://ori.scs.stanford.edu http://ori.scs.stanford.edu): > Ori is a distributed file system built for offline operation and empowers the user with control over synchronization operations and conflict resolution. We provide history through light weight snapshots and allow users to verify the history has not been tampered with. Through the use of replication instances can be resilient and recover damaged data from other nodes. It seems well thought out, and competitive with many of the other approaches mentioned here. It uses Merkle trees (as does Git) that encompasses the file system structure and full history.
- xwei 12y ago
  Academic software usually for publication. After paper accepted, unless they could publish another paper using same software/concept/idea, this software will dis-continued.
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
I would like to see something like this that does not place trust on the server hosting the files.
- hnha 12y ago
  seafile lets you have encrypted directories.
  - nodata 12y ago
    https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350
zyngaro 12y ago
"Each node scans for changes every sixty seconds". There isn't any portable way to get notfications about file changes instead of polling? I know about jnotify in Java but well it's in java.
- icebraining 12y ago
  I don't think there is. Joey Hess ended up having to support inotify, kqueue, hfsevents and ReadDirectoryChangesW for his git-annex assistant.
- phlyingpenguin 12y ago
  You may have picked this up elsewhere in the conversation, but they are waiting on Go to have good cross platform support in the standard library for file change notification. This was originally going to be part of 1.3, but it's been pushed off to the next version of Go. https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4068 https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4068 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GQrFdDVrA57-ce0kbzSth4lQqfOMMRKpih3hPJmvoU/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GQrFdDVrA57-ce0kbzSth4l...!
zyngaro 12y ago
"Each node scans for changes every sixty seconds". There isn't any portable way to get notfications about file changes instead of polling? I know about jnotify in Java but well it's in java.
doctoboggan 12y ago
A few months ago I looked into using Syncthing for my decentralized browser, Syncnet[0]. At that time it did not seem ready for primetime. Does anyone have a good feel for its maturity as of late? For example, is there an API? Syncthing looks very promising and I would love to integrate Syncnet with it. [0]: http://jack.minardi.org/software/syncnet-a-decentralized-web-browser/ http://jack.minardi.org/software/syncnet-a-decentralized-web...
- RachelF 12y ago
  Syncnet looks great!
Fede_V 12y ago
This looks incredibly interesting, and I would very much like to move from Dropbox to something open source. Thanks, will definitely play with it.
abalone 12y ago
"Replacement" is too strong a word here. P2P sync requires at least 2 peers to be online at once. For the simple case of syncing your work and home computers or sharing with coworkers that is not always a reliable assumption. It's only a replacement for a centralized service like Dropbox if you have an always-connected peer (a de facto central server).
- zapt02 12y ago
  Not to be condescending, but what did you expect from a "roll your own" solution? Of course you have to host it yourself. This has been the case forever, OwnCloud being the biggest example right now.
  - abalone 12y ago
    That's fine, but call it what it is. I only objected to calling it a "replacement". There's a big functional difference between P2P and centralized architectures.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      It seems as if you explained that it was useful as an always on central server to replace Dropbox, though.
      - abalone 12y ago
        Yes, absolutely. But that is a significantly greater requirement, each end user or workgroup running their own server. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for pointing that out. It's not an apples-to-apples replacement. This + a hosting provider would be more like an actual Dropbox replacement (e.g. owncloud.org links to a bunch of hosts).
        pessimizer 12y ago
        That's not what I'm looking for. I do have a computer at home that is always on. edit: Do people generally still turn off their home computers? edit2: After thinking about it - what you seem to be describing is an alternative and not just a replacement. I want to replace the service that Dropbox offers with one of my own, I don't want to switch to an alternative Dropbox clone service.
sixothree 12y ago
It appears HN readers are terrible at self-organizing. Threads for articles like this should include by default a top level node for: "Here's the alternative I use" "Important question about the technology" "Pertinent question about the article"
- dj-wonk 12y ago
  How can we organize after threads have already been started?
  - skeletonjelly 12y ago
    Do I smell a niche for time travel startups? Disrupt the Big Time monopoly!
    - dj-wonk 12y ago
      Well, I can't be sure, but I think colloborative technology for rearranging threads on-the-fly might be slightly less complicated than monopoly-busting or time-travel.
- nodata 12y ago
  Good idea.
dead10ck 12y ago
This looks very promising. And it's written in Go! The only major feature I think it's missing is file versioning. I am curious, though: what do people use to get their files remotely? And what's the cheapest solution for hosting your own central server? Would a simple AWS instance work fine?
- Foxboron 12y ago
  I server them to myself using _h5ai (stylized HTTP index) and nginx, displaying a portion of my files. I'd also take a look at digitalocean for a VPS.
Joona 12y ago
I'm looking for a replacement for Dropbox, but it seems that none support direct links, like in Dropbox's public folder (example: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38901452/fox2.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38901452/fox2.jpg ) Is there one?
- Foxboron 12y ago
  The reason is because most of the options; owncloud, btsync, seafile and syncthing dosn't upload to a unknown company server. It only shares the files between your devices. Its a huge pluss when you think about security. The downside is that a device have to be online to share or update the files. I use BTSync and to avoid the problem i just upload the files to my server and display them under a subdomain. http://pub.volpe.pw/pub/fox_gl.jpg http://pub.volpe.pw/pub/fox_gl.jpg BtSync also offers a phone client, so to mimc the way Dropbox uploads pictures to dropbox was rather simple. I backed up a gallery on my phone and synced it to my server and symlinked it under the pub dir, as BTSync dosn't follow symlinks.
  - Joona 12y ago
    I don't mind uploading them under a subdomain or such, but I really like how easily I can get a public link from Dropbox. How hard was it to set up?
    - Foxboron 12y ago
      Once i had setup the subdomain it wasnt hard at all really. I only had a problem where nginx couldnt serve the files from my home dir (i preffer to have the syncing folder there), but it was solved quickly with google and SO.
  - jve 12y ago
    I just set up a BTSync server with Pyd.io on top, which I can use to generate URL for my file. No manual copying.
- pestaa 12y ago
  I love that public directory feature! I ended up using seafile and just maintaining a copy of a public directory there using the command line client. Works like a charm, very easy to setup.
desireco42 12y ago
Since I installed Bittorrent Sync, my need for such software stopped as it works really well and provides all I need from it. I couldn't understand quite advantages and why would I replace BTSync, which BTW, works really well already and does all this nice things. Plus works on my Phone and Ipad and Nexus. To clarify one thing, I have home server which obviously hosts BTSync repos with ample space. Ability to fine-grained share parts of it is invaluable.
orblivion 12y ago
Does somebody fund projects like this? Or is it just that the people in charge of them understand something about UI and marketing? Seems like a nice trend, if so.
- AdrianoZum 12y ago
  I've wondered this too. Perhaps they charge extra for more features or get money consulting?
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I really like the idea but one thing is stopping me: portability to iOS and Android devices, and mobile apps that work with Dropbox. Dropbox has a first-mover advantage. This is mostly a problem for people like me who use both Android and iOS devices so alternatives need to support both platforms.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
chris123 12y ago
Can we get a "Bitcoin meets Dropbox meets Airbnb" already? Thks :)
freework 12y ago
One thing I've never gotten about these "syncing" apps... Lets say I install this software on my phone, my desktop, and my work computer. I have 100+ GB free on my work computer and my home desktop, but I only have 16GB on my phone. If I add 20GB worth of movies to my sync folder, its going to fill up my phone.
- cespare 12y ago
  I believe Bazil[0] is aiming to solve this problem, among others. [0] http://bazil.org/ http://bazil.org/
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  Dropbox, at least, lets you select which directories get synced per device, i.e. so your desktop and HTPC can share movies but your phone never sees any of them.
  - sreitshamer 12y ago
    I thought you could only sync individual files (mark them as favorites). Can you download a folder to your iPhone with dropbox?
- smathieu 12y ago
  Bitcasa (https://www.bitcasa.com/ https://www.bitcasa.com/) also solves that problems by streaming your files on demand.
  - sirsar 12y ago
    "Bitcasa’s proprietary block-level encryption..." This phrase does not inspire confidence.
- nuclear_eclipse 12y ago
  Dropbox has "selective sync", so individual PC's can choose to only sync a subset of folders from your account. Also, phones running Dropbox don't actually "sync" anything to the phone. You can choose to download individual files, or stream them straight from the Dropbox app, but it doesn't offer you any way to keep files on the phone up to date with whats in the "cloud".
downstream1960 12y ago
So its basically pirating, but its saves across all platforms?
- nanawnator 12y ago
  Not really
haxxorfreak 12y ago
I don't see a Solaris build on the download page but it's listed next to the download button on the home page, am I just missing something?
scragg 12y ago
I would of liked the name "synctank" better. :)
sinkasapa 12y ago
One of my favorite open source tools of this kind is unison. It works great. I set it up to go and I don't even notice it is there. It is quick, seems to have been around for a while and is packaged for most Linux distros. It has a GUI but you don't need it. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
- sdfjkl 12y ago
  Unison is a under-appreciated gem of file synchronization. The author also published several papers on the subject: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/index.shtml#File%20Synchronization http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/index.shtml#File%2...
ertdfgcb 12y ago
Unrelated, is one of the best open source project landing pages I've ever seen.
interg12 12y ago
What's wrong with BitTorrent Sync? The fact that it's a company?
- damncabbage 12y ago
  It's closed-source; we can't fix things like the crappy crypto (shared key), and can't spot backdoors or see what it's actually doing without a lot of effort.
- joeblau 12y ago
  @damncabbage is right. I wanted to use it to integrate it into photo sharing application for mobile devices but I couldn't because it's closed source. This has a lot more promise.
davidjhall 12y ago
Does this need to use the web gui? I tried setting this up on a digital ocean server and it spawns off a webserver on 8080 that I can't reach from my machine. Is there a "headless" mode for client-less servers? Thanks
- papaf 12y ago
  ssh -L8080:localhost:8080 mywebserver.com
- jablan 12y ago
  You can edit ~/.config/syncthing/config.xml and restart.
  - davidjhall 12y ago
    This helped me ( though I'm sure the ssh tunnel would've worked, I couldn't get it running right) -- I changed the web address to my ip:port, and could then log in, add my host, and then change it back to headless or localhost. Thanks!
- nodata 12y ago
  It's headless by default (but it starts a web browser going to localhost:8080 by default too). If you don't have a web browser, it won't open it. If you don't want it to open a web browser, you can configure that.
nl 12y ago
Is there any mobile support? I use Dropbox pretty frequently to share stuff between mobile devices and desktops. If Syncthing can't do that it isn't as useful.
- Andrenid 12y ago
  As soon as someone makes a Dropbox alternative that has no servers, has selective-sync to my iPhone, and is compatible with Keepass to store the database, then I'm there. I'd happily pay for it, too.
bankim 12y ago
Alternative would be AeroFS (https://aerofs.com/ https://aerofs.com/) which also does P2P file sync.
- pekk 12y ago
  Kind of a pig for resources though
ReAzem 12y ago
I would also like to point out https://www.syncany.org/ https://www.syncany.org/ Syncany can work with any backend (like AWS S3) and is encrypted. It is more of a dropbox replacement while sycnthing is a btsync replacement.
Lucadg 12y ago
another alternative: http://www.filement.com/ http://www.filement.com/ I don't use it but friends do and are pretty happy with it. From their home page: - Combine devices and cloud services into a single interface. - Transfer data between computers, smartphones, tablets and clouds. - Manage and use data directly on the device or cloud it is stored.
hellbreakslose 12y ago
Cool, I always like it when things are open source!
popey 12y ago
I've been using Syncthing for some months now and it's working well for my use case of keeping laptop/desktop and home server files in sync. I had one occasion when I lost everything as I'd brought up syncthing on my server without the "sync" directory mounted. It happily deleted all files from my synced laptop as a result. That's now fixed, but it was a buttock clenching moment. Yay backups, and a third machine (desktop) which was suspended and thus out of sync, so still had my data. Upstream developer is very friendly and attentive & seems happy to discuss new features and use cases.
marcamillion 12y ago
I have large media files, multiple TBs. I deal with a constant stream of these and want to have a distributed network - connected via the inet - that allows me to sync the drives in all locations. i.e. I would like to setup a server in my home office, one in my co-founder's home office and another in my editor's home office. Whenever my editor runs off a few hundred GB of data to a specific folder or to their drive, I would love for that to be auto-synced to both my server and that of my co-founder. Will Syncthing allow me to do this easily and will it be appropriate for an application like that?
- nodata 12y ago
  It will do what you describe, but since you are handling large files you should know that Syncthing currently doesn't do dedupe, so if you rename or move a file, or have multiple copies of it, it will sync the whole file again. Changes within a file that don't move are handled efficiently.
  - marcamillion 12y ago
    If I am not mistaken, you can't do dedupes on media files, right?
- dublinben 12y ago
  It sounds like you could be using Tahoe-LAFS. There are also a number of other distributed file systems.
scrrr 12y ago
Is there a paper / doc explaining, how the synchronisation works in detail?
emsy 12y ago
Yet another sync app is Pyd.io The Web UI is super neat, and you can choose between various backends for storage. Pyd.io offers its own sync app which I found to be horribly slow. I'd suggest to use Pyd.io as a frontend and BtSync/Seafile/Syncthing as a backend.
akumen 12y ago
We love to through around the words "alternative" and " replacement" it is neither until it is as easy to use/deploy as X for the average Joe. You know 90% of people out there who would't be able to out the words 'git', 'deploy' and 'heroku' in the right order as their eyes glaze over in confusion.
biocoder 12y ago
Have you checked Hive2Hive? Something similar but not yet there. https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive
- nicoruti 12y ago
  In contrast to Syncthing, Hive2Hive is more a library, providing an API for any kind of program that requires file synchronization. Another major difference is that Hive2Hive is written in Java and not in Go.
- seppi 12y ago
  It would be quiet interesting to point out the differences between Hive2Hive and Syncthing... H2H uses for example a DHT as underlying peer-to-peer technology.
jms703 12y ago
++ this effort. I'm looking forward to replacing my current BitTorrent Sync (btsync) setup with Syncthing.
grey-area 12y ago
This project's aims seem very similar to the earlier camilstore project, also written in go: https://camlistore.org https://camlistore.org Anyone know how it compares?

623 points by ushi 12y ago

binaryanomaly 12y ago

Let's hope this becomes what it is promising and reliefs me of dropbox and the likes... ;)

clementmiao 12y ago
I'm curious, what are your complaints about Dropbox? Security, UI, UX, features?

r0muald 12y ago

A better title would be "Syncthing, an open source Dropbox replacement written in Go". But seriously, it seems promising.

JonAtkinson 12y ago

I just setup Sparkleshare (http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/) this weekend. I wanted something which wasn't Dropbox, and preferably open-source, and while Sparkleshare has a slightly clunky pair mechanism, it works beautifully. Syncthing looks similar, and LAN sync'ing is a killer feature for those of us in offices with poor bandwidth.

marlin 12y ago
Dropbox actually have a "Sync over LAN" checkbox. It just never seem to been implemented/enabled. I actually just dropped Dropbox for btsync the other week and are very happy, it's iOS app even serves other clients with files over LAN. Btsync however uses quite crappy crypto and is closed source etc etc. Syncthing mentions they use TLS encryption, hopefully i can roll my own 8k keys. I tried Sparkleshare last year aswell, but my experience was mixed. Also it relies on quite a different architecture (git) than a "versioning bittorrent protocol". Looking forward to evaluating syncthing when time permits.
- Shorel 12y ago
  How come? I have seen it working.
  - marlin 12y ago
    Thats curious. I never got it working between Windows, Linux and Mac clients. Sorry for drawing conclusions.
- NDizzle 12y ago
  Isn't it always enabled by default?! The last few times I've set up a new machine locally I've used Dropbox to pull over stuff. It usually moves at 40-50 MB/s (megabytes) which is certainly using my gigabit LAN.
  - marlin 12y ago
    According to [1], "LAN sync" only works when file has already been uploaded to the dropbox servers. If this is accurate, then I guess this is the issue i have noticed. 1: https://superuser.com/questions/663600/set-dropbox-to-only-use-lan-sync-dont-allow-web-sync https://superuser.com/questions/663600/set-dropbox-to-only-u... UPDATE: Confirmed by [2], that Dropbox LAN sync indeed only works once the file reached their servers. "Well, when you add a file to your computer's Dropbox, the file is then synced with Dropbox servers. Dropbox will then initiate the syncing process as soon as it determines a change has been made to the file. All linked computers and shared folders will then download any new version of the file. With LAN syncing, Dropbox will look for the new file on your Local Area Network first, bypassing the need to download the file from Dropbox servers, thus speeding up the syncing process considerably." 2: https://www.dropbox.com/help/137/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/137/en
    - nodata 12y ago
      For anyone wondering, Dropbox changed this a while back. The requirement to sync to Dropbox first was added at that point.
    - 12y ago
Karunamon 12y ago
I never had much luck with Sparkleshare - in particular, I got burned by it a couple times when files I placed in the shared folder never got synchronized and I was not notified of this anywhere. Get to office, and oh crap my files weren't there..

aw3c2 12y ago

This looks very promising. But the documentation is not good. I have not managed to find a "1 minute" friendly overview of how it works. I mean, what data gets sent how where and why.

ushi 12y ago
It is a very young project (pre v1.0) - so give it some time. You can read about the protocol here[0]. [0] https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
nodata 12y ago
> But the documentation is not good. The linked website is aimed at end-users. Try the protocol docs: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
- aw3c2 12y ago
  On, I meant end-user friendly documentation. Like ushi said, it is probably too early for that. Thanks!
  - nodata 12y ago
    You could try the discourse site: http://discourse.syncthing.net/category/documentation http://discourse.syncthing.net/category/documentation
    - aw3c2 12y ago
      I did, it drowned me in other things. ;-)
johnwyles 12y ago
someone above posted this: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...

alyandon 12y ago

I can't really seem to find this information in the documentation. Does this support delta/block-level sync for large files (e.g.: does mounting a 100 GB truecrypt container, modifying a file inside the container and unmounting it cause the entire 100 GB container to be uploaded)? Does it utilize the native OS platform APIs for detecting file modification (e.g. inotify on linux) as opposed to scanning/polling large directories looking for modified date changes?

nodata 12y ago
Protocol information is linked from the homepage: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT... > Does this support delta/block-level sync for large files Yes. > Does it utilize the native OS platform APIs for detecting file modification It uses polling. Edit: inotify issue is here: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 (the author seems to want to implement this feature once go has a decent cross-platform file watching library)
- alyandon 12y ago
  Thanks for the quick response. I just got through reading PROTOCOL.md and was about to update my post.
johnwyles 12y ago
Aside: I was wondering this about Bittorrent Sync as well - would you happen to know?
marlin 12y ago
EDIT: i realized i answered about btsync while question was about syncthing, sorry. Regarding detecting file modifications: my friend had issues with his synology diskstation eating 100% cpu with btsync with around 50k files. With less files it was down to 20%. We never debugged it properly but it may be polling issues, but it could also have been out of ram-swapping issues (512MB ram was not enough). Others have reported issues with many files: https://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/23802-syncing-600gb-10-million-files-recommend-settings/ https://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/23802-syncing-600gb-10-mi...

simbolit 12y ago

I use http://owncloud.org http://owncloud.org and am quite happy. But also happy for more competition :-)

aram 12y ago
No matter how much I tried, I always had crappy experience using OwnCloud (-> very slow to recognize new files and sync them across other computers). I tried it maybe 4-5 times in total, last time just couple of weeks ago. Does it work fast for you? Do you use desktop client or primarily web GUI?
- josteink 12y ago
  I tried it too, but ended up replacing it with something else. It was slow as a pig, was unable to handle datasync with failures and timeouts on any reasonable amount of files (a 2000 file user) and constantly made my CPU fan hit max. My server was a Core i7 with 12GBs of RAM, SSD backing and a more or less dedicated NAS. I tried with both SQLite and MySQL backing. MySQL was better, but still unacceptable. If that's not enough to run it for a single user, I can't imagine what it's like trying to deploy it for a full family, even less an organization. I love the idea behind owncloud, and I admit touting it myself in my own "honeymoon phase", but in hindsight I have no problem admitting that the execution is just too poor.
  - aram 12y ago
    Same experience. I tried it on DO droplets (1, 2, 4 and then 16GB of RAM to see if I'm nuts), computer I'm working on (16GB RAM) and from a RPi (that was for fun though). Every single time it was painfully slow. It took it about 1h to sync a folder with about 100 files, under 30MB total across 4 computers. Not to mention that minor modifications appeared only after 15 minutes (small text files). BTSync worked great, but I wouldn't trust it with something sensitive. What did you end up using?
    - josteink 12y ago
      > What did you end up using? Long story short, I went from an "all cloud" (Google + Dropbox) setup to a "all mine, no NSA" setup. Now I've decided that counter zealotry doesn't have that much for it, and I'll try to balance privacy with best of breed services, without trying to end up with all my eggs in one basket. Not doing that ensures I keep interop and portability in mind. My end-result is calendar via Google (only solution I can get collaboration and invites working properly), files via Dropbox, mail with Fastmail (much better than Gmail) and contacts via Baikal on my own hosted server. Fastmail is adding support for calendering and contacts via CalDAV and CardDAV, but I've yet to fully investigate that. It's a moving target for me, but currently it's been stable for a few months, and I'm mostly happy.

XorNot 12y ago

Can we please please please make it a standard that synchronization tools spell out how they handle conflicts on the front page. Bittorrent Sync just overwrites files based on last mod time (terrible option). What does this do? Does it support backups? Versioning?

ape4 12y ago
Their protocol is published https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROT...
- saurik 12y ago
  I think the point is also "this is actually critical information that is important for end users of the system to understand, not esoteric knowledge only required by developers".
ushi 12y ago
I learned about Syncthing here[0]. The article mentions that there is no versioning at the moment. [0] http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2014/05/10/syncthing/ http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2014/05/10/syncthing/
nodata 12y ago
Newest change wins. More detail: https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/61#issue-27202590 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/61#issue-27202590
- nightpool 12y ago
  Specifically, this is not dependent on last mod time, but instead a "version" field in each file's metadata that is incremented every time a file changes. I'm not really sure how that's going to help with concurrent (or conflicting) edits though.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
What does Dropbox do?

nvk 12y ago

That's great news, have been looking for a OSS sync app for quite some time.

Wilya 12y ago

That looks like a promising project in a space which definitely needs improvement. Owncloud and Sparkleshare are okay, but they are far from perfect, and there is large room for improvement.

chrisBob 12y ago

I am very happy with the timemachine backup on my mac, but I have been looking for a good offsite backup solution so that I can trade storage with my family in case something happens to my house. This might finally be the right option. BT Sync seemed ok, but was more than I wanted my parents to try and setup.

ant512 12y ago
Try CrashPlan: http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ It's free for peer-to-peer backup and is designed to do exactly what you want.
- slight 12y ago
  Their cloud storage for backups is really cheap if you have a lot to back up and want them to handle your off-site too.
- chrisBob 12y ago
  Thanks. That looks like a good fit, and the paid plans are probably less than I would spend on a set of external drives anyway. I will give it a try.

frabcus 12y ago

Fancy being interviewed for http://redecentralize.org/ http://redecentralize.org/ ? If so, email me francis@redecentralize.org! (I couldn't see an email or contact form for you on the syncthing site)

ushi 12y ago
You can find an email at the authors GitHub profile[0]. https://github.com/calmh https://github.com/calmh
- frabcus 12y ago
  Thanks!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

stinos 12y ago

Since we're listing alternatives here: I setup SeaFile (http://seafile.com/ http://seafile.com/) a couple of months ago and I'm loving it so far. Mainly because it has client-side encryption and allows a single client to sync with different servers and selectively choose which 'libraries' (basically directories that are under sync) to use. Typical usecase is having a personal server for personal files and another one at the office for work-related stuff.

nodata 12y ago
I couldn't decipher what SeaFile was or how all the components fitted together, can you recommend a review or write-up?
- mverwijs 12y ago
  Components overview: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki/Seafile-server-components-overview https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki/Seafile-server-compon... (Installed it yesterday on a debian LXC)
dcalacci 12y ago
I use seafile as well - I host it on my digital ocean instance and it works very well and things sync very quickly. best part is that it does automatic, granular snapshots of my data - I've stopped using git for things like papers because I know it's backed up in seafile.
naiyt 12y ago
I've been using Seafile for a few weeks as well, and have been pretty impressed. It's been a better experience then ownCloud, for me. Having an open source syncing service with client side encryption is great.
pestaa 12y ago
Very much agreed. Seafile absolutely blows ownCloud out of the water.
- 12y ago

twosheep 12y ago

So this may be as good a thread as any to ask for assistance: My small business is looking for a combined file collaboration / file backup service that doesn't cost an excessive amount of money (we're a non-profit on a budget). Is there a good service for this? For example, Dropbox is mainly for sharing files, whereas Carbonite is mostly for backing up your computer. Is there a solution for both?

encoded 12y ago
SpiderOak does both. Their interface is, IMO, not nearly as good as Dropbox (I've never used carbonite), but it does check both boxes (backup and sharing/sync).
- twosheep 12y ago
  Yeah but SpiderOak is $5/user/MONTH, so with 30 employees we're looking at $1800/year which is just crazy.
vitovito 12y ago
Basedrive might do it; it's an actual local server running their platform which you backup to/collaborate on, that you buy, rather than a service. http://basedrive.me http://basedrive.me

taterbase 12y ago

Git-Annex is a great existing option (made by joeyhess). https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/

rsync 12y ago
This is a year or so old, but it still works for new customers: http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html
Dylan16807 12y ago
Can you explain to me why and how I would use git-annex for real time sync? From what I understand of it, it works well for backups and for managing media files, but I don't understand how it handles the use case of making two directories on two computers pretend to be one.
- prutschman 12y ago
  git-annex assistant, by the same author, builds automatic synchronization on top of git-annex: https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
Yen 12y ago
I once gave git-annex a serious try (a few weekends of all-day efforts), as a way of sharing my music library between personal machines. It seemed to fail pretty hard on the cross-platform part. I really wanted it to work, I just couldn't get it to do so. It was great at first on a single Linux machine, but once I had to support Windows, things became much more complicated. Most of this I attribute to Windows - different filename character restrictions, no usable symlinks, git only kinda-sorta supported through cygwin. Setting up an SSH server under Windows was something I didn't want to do, and HTTP sync was pretty buggy (different hashing schemes between the two computers, for some reason). If things have gotten better, or someone's written a good tutorial on having an actual decentralized repo shared between Windows and Linux machines, I'd be interested in giving it another go. Also might need to hack up a mobile app. I haven't dug into Syncthing's protocol yet, but I also like the idea of being able to easily share a single sync'd folder or file with an outside person, but not having to point them at a full repository.

rsync 12y ago

Here is the original from a year or so ago: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Set_up_your_own_truly_secure_encrypted_shared_storage_aka_Dropbox_clone.html https://raymii.org/s/articles/Set_up_your_own_truly_secure_e... "Then all current commercial services drop off, including SpiderOak, Bittorrent Sync and git-annex. This resulted in a clever combination of EncFS and dvcs-autosync. Because, in this day and age, you cannot trust any "cloud" provider with your unencrypted data."

icebraining 12y ago
The author was uninformed, though. git-annex has supported encryption for special remotes (including your own rsync.net) since the early beginning (the wiki page[1] has been there since 2011). And it's certainly open source. [1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/encryption/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/encryption/

Karunamon 12y ago

How good is this at traversing firewalls? AFAIK, Dropbox will do some manner of HTTP trickery to allow syncing when behind overly-restrictive firewalls (so it just goes out the usually-provided web proxy), but the documentation here references forwarding ports + UPNP, so I'm guessing that doesn't apply here?

pjkundert 12y ago

Has anyone else taken a look at Ori (http://ori.scs.stanford.edu http://ori.scs.stanford.edu): > Ori is a distributed file system built for offline operation and empowers the user with control over synchronization operations and conflict resolution. We provide history through light weight snapshots and allow users to verify the history has not been tampered with. Through the use of replication instances can be resilient and recover damaged data from other nodes. It seems well thought out, and competitive with many of the other approaches mentioned here. It uses Merkle trees (as does Git) that encompasses the file system structure and full history.

xwei 12y ago
Academic software usually for publication. After paper accepted, unless they could publish another paper using same software/concept/idea, this software will dis-continued.

Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago

I would like to see something like this that does not place trust on the server hosting the files.

hnha 12y ago
seafile lets you have encrypted directories.
- nodata 12y ago
  https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350

zyngaro 12y ago

"Each node scans for changes every sixty seconds". There isn't any portable way to get notfications about file changes instead of polling? I know about jnotify in Java but well it's in java.

icebraining 12y ago
I don't think there is. Joey Hess ended up having to support inotify, kqueue, hfsevents and ReadDirectoryChangesW for his git-annex assistant.
phlyingpenguin 12y ago
You may have picked this up elsewhere in the conversation, but they are waiting on Go to have good cross platform support in the standard library for file change notification. This was originally going to be part of 1.3, but it's been pushed off to the next version of Go. https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/issues/9 https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4068 https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4068 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GQrFdDVrA57-ce0kbzSth4lQqfOMMRKpih3hPJmvoU/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GQrFdDVrA57-ce0kbzSth4l...!

zyngaro 12y ago

"Each node scans for changes every sixty seconds". There isn't any portable way to get notfications about file changes instead of polling? I know about jnotify in Java but well it's in java.

doctoboggan 12y ago

A few months ago I looked into using Syncthing for my decentralized browser, Syncnet[0]. At that time it did not seem ready for primetime. Does anyone have a good feel for its maturity as of late? For example, is there an API? Syncthing looks very promising and I would love to integrate Syncnet with it. [0]: http://jack.minardi.org/software/syncnet-a-decentralized-web-browser/ http://jack.minardi.org/software/syncnet-a-decentralized-web...

RachelF 12y ago
Syncnet looks great!

Fede_V 12y ago

This looks incredibly interesting, and I would very much like to move from Dropbox to something open source. Thanks, will definitely play with it.

abalone 12y ago

"Replacement" is too strong a word here. P2P sync requires at least 2 peers to be online at once. For the simple case of syncing your work and home computers or sharing with coworkers that is not always a reliable assumption. It's only a replacement for a centralized service like Dropbox if you have an always-connected peer (a de facto central server).

zapt02 12y ago
Not to be condescending, but what did you expect from a "roll your own" solution? Of course you have to host it yourself. This has been the case forever, OwnCloud being the biggest example right now.
- abalone 12y ago
  That's fine, but call it what it is. I only objected to calling it a "replacement". There's a big functional difference between P2P and centralized architectures.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    It seems as if you explained that it was useful as an always on central server to replace Dropbox, though.
    - abalone 12y ago
      Yes, absolutely. But that is a significantly greater requirement, each end user or workgroup running their own server. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for pointing that out. It's not an apples-to-apples replacement. This + a hosting provider would be more like an actual Dropbox replacement (e.g. owncloud.org links to a bunch of hosts).
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        That's not what I'm looking for. I do have a computer at home that is always on. edit: Do people generally still turn off their home computers? edit2: After thinking about it - what you seem to be describing is an alternative and not just a replacement. I want to replace the service that Dropbox offers with one of my own, I don't want to switch to an alternative Dropbox clone service.

sixothree 12y ago

It appears HN readers are terrible at self-organizing. Threads for articles like this should include by default a top level node for: "Here's the alternative I use" "Important question about the technology" "Pertinent question about the article"

dj-wonk 12y ago
How can we organize after threads have already been started?
- skeletonjelly 12y ago
  Do I smell a niche for time travel startups? Disrupt the Big Time monopoly!
  - dj-wonk 12y ago
    Well, I can't be sure, but I think colloborative technology for rearranging threads on-the-fly might be slightly less complicated than monopoly-busting or time-travel.
nodata 12y ago
Good idea.

dead10ck 12y ago

This looks very promising. And it's written in Go! The only major feature I think it's missing is file versioning. I am curious, though: what do people use to get their files remotely? And what's the cheapest solution for hosting your own central server? Would a simple AWS instance work fine?

Foxboron 12y ago
I server them to myself using _h5ai (stylized HTTP index) and nginx, displaying a portion of my files. I'd also take a look at digitalocean for a VPS.

Joona 12y ago

I'm looking for a replacement for Dropbox, but it seems that none support direct links, like in Dropbox's public folder (example: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38901452/fox2.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38901452/fox2.jpg ) Is there one?

Foxboron 12y ago
The reason is because most of the options; owncloud, btsync, seafile and syncthing dosn't upload to a unknown company server. It only shares the files between your devices. Its a huge pluss when you think about security. The downside is that a device have to be online to share or update the files. I use BTSync and to avoid the problem i just upload the files to my server and display them under a subdomain. http://pub.volpe.pw/pub/fox_gl.jpg http://pub.volpe.pw/pub/fox_gl.jpg BtSync also offers a phone client, so to mimc the way Dropbox uploads pictures to dropbox was rather simple. I backed up a gallery on my phone and synced it to my server and symlinked it under the pub dir, as BTSync dosn't follow symlinks.
- Joona 12y ago
  I don't mind uploading them under a subdomain or such, but I really like how easily I can get a public link from Dropbox. How hard was it to set up?
  - Foxboron 12y ago
    Once i had setup the subdomain it wasnt hard at all really. I only had a problem where nginx couldnt serve the files from my home dir (i preffer to have the syncing folder there), but it was solved quickly with google and SO.
- jve 12y ago
  I just set up a BTSync server with Pyd.io on top, which I can use to generate URL for my file. No manual copying.
pestaa 12y ago
I love that public directory feature! I ended up using seafile and just maintaining a copy of a public directory there using the command line client. Works like a charm, very easy to setup.

desireco42 12y ago

Since I installed Bittorrent Sync, my need for such software stopped as it works really well and provides all I need from it. I couldn't understand quite advantages and why would I replace BTSync, which BTW, works really well already and does all this nice things. Plus works on my Phone and Ipad and Nexus. To clarify one thing, I have home server which obviously hosts BTSync repos with ample space. Ability to fine-grained share parts of it is invaluable.

orblivion 12y ago

Does somebody fund projects like this? Or is it just that the people in charge of them understand something about UI and marketing? Seems like a nice trend, if so.

AdrianoZum 12y ago
I've wondered this too. Perhaps they charge extra for more features or get money consulting?

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I really like the idea but one thing is stopping me: portability to iOS and Android devices, and mobile apps that work with Dropbox. Dropbox has a first-mover advantage. This is mostly a problem for people like me who use both Android and iOS devices so alternatives need to support both platforms.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

chris123 12y ago

Can we get a "Bitcoin meets Dropbox meets Airbnb" already? Thks :)

freework 12y ago

One thing I've never gotten about these "syncing" apps... Lets say I install this software on my phone, my desktop, and my work computer. I have 100+ GB free on my work computer and my home desktop, but I only have 16GB on my phone. If I add 20GB worth of movies to my sync folder, its going to fill up my phone.

cespare 12y ago
I believe Bazil[0] is aiming to solve this problem, among others. [0] http://bazil.org/ http://bazil.org/
ANTSANTS 12y ago
Dropbox, at least, lets you select which directories get synced per device, i.e. so your desktop and HTPC can share movies but your phone never sees any of them.
- sreitshamer 12y ago
  I thought you could only sync individual files (mark them as favorites). Can you download a folder to your iPhone with dropbox?
smathieu 12y ago
Bitcasa (https://www.bitcasa.com/ https://www.bitcasa.com/) also solves that problems by streaming your files on demand.
- sirsar 12y ago
  "Bitcasa’s proprietary block-level encryption..." This phrase does not inspire confidence.
nuclear_eclipse 12y ago
Dropbox has "selective sync", so individual PC's can choose to only sync a subset of folders from your account. Also, phones running Dropbox don't actually "sync" anything to the phone. You can choose to download individual files, or stream them straight from the Dropbox app, but it doesn't offer you any way to keep files on the phone up to date with whats in the "cloud".

downstream1960 12y ago

So its basically pirating, but its saves across all platforms?

nanawnator 12y ago
Not really

haxxorfreak 12y ago

I don't see a Solaris build on the download page but it's listed next to the download button on the home page, am I just missing something?

scragg 12y ago

I would of liked the name "synctank" better. :)

sinkasapa 12y ago

One of my favorite open source tools of this kind is unison. It works great. I set it up to go and I don't even notice it is there. It is quick, seems to have been around for a while and is packaged for most Linux distros. It has a GUI but you don't need it. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

sdfjkl 12y ago
Unison is a under-appreciated gem of file synchronization. The author also published several papers on the subject: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/index.shtml#File%20Synchronization http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/index.shtml#File%2...

ertdfgcb 12y ago

Unrelated, is one of the best open source project landing pages I've ever seen.

interg12 12y ago

What's wrong with BitTorrent Sync? The fact that it's a company?

damncabbage 12y ago
It's closed-source; we can't fix things like the crappy crypto (shared key), and can't spot backdoors or see what it's actually doing without a lot of effort.
joeblau 12y ago
@damncabbage is right. I wanted to use it to integrate it into photo sharing application for mobile devices but I couldn't because it's closed source. This has a lot more promise.

davidjhall 12y ago

Does this need to use the web gui? I tried setting this up on a digital ocean server and it spawns off a webserver on 8080 that I can't reach from my machine. Is there a "headless" mode for client-less servers? Thanks

papaf 12y ago
ssh -L8080:localhost:8080 mywebserver.com
jablan 12y ago
You can edit ~/.config/syncthing/config.xml and restart.
- davidjhall 12y ago
  This helped me ( though I'm sure the ssh tunnel would've worked, I couldn't get it running right) -- I changed the web address to my ip:port, and could then log in, add my host, and then change it back to headless or localhost. Thanks!
nodata 12y ago
It's headless by default (but it starts a web browser going to localhost:8080 by default too). If you don't have a web browser, it won't open it. If you don't want it to open a web browser, you can configure that.

nl 12y ago

Is there any mobile support? I use Dropbox pretty frequently to share stuff between mobile devices and desktops. If Syncthing can't do that it isn't as useful.

Andrenid 12y ago
As soon as someone makes a Dropbox alternative that has no servers, has selective-sync to my iPhone, and is compatible with Keepass to store the database, then I'm there. I'd happily pay for it, too.

bankim 12y ago

Alternative would be AeroFS (https://aerofs.com/ https://aerofs.com/) which also does P2P file sync.

pekk 12y ago
Kind of a pig for resources though

ReAzem 12y ago

I would also like to point out https://www.syncany.org/ https://www.syncany.org/ Syncany can work with any backend (like AWS S3) and is encrypted. It is more of a dropbox replacement while sycnthing is a btsync replacement.

Lucadg 12y ago

another alternative: http://www.filement.com/ http://www.filement.com/ I don't use it but friends do and are pretty happy with it. From their home page: - Combine devices and cloud services into a single interface. - Transfer data between computers, smartphones, tablets and clouds. - Manage and use data directly on the device or cloud it is stored.

hellbreakslose 12y ago

Cool, I always like it when things are open source!

popey 12y ago

I've been using Syncthing for some months now and it's working well for my use case of keeping laptop/desktop and home server files in sync. I had one occasion when I lost everything as I'd brought up syncthing on my server without the "sync" directory mounted. It happily deleted all files from my synced laptop as a result. That's now fixed, but it was a buttock clenching moment. Yay backups, and a third machine (desktop) which was suspended and thus out of sync, so still had my data. Upstream developer is very friendly and attentive & seems happy to discuss new features and use cases.

marcamillion 12y ago

I have large media files, multiple TBs. I deal with a constant stream of these and want to have a distributed network - connected via the inet - that allows me to sync the drives in all locations. i.e. I would like to setup a server in my home office, one in my co-founder's home office and another in my editor's home office. Whenever my editor runs off a few hundred GB of data to a specific folder or to their drive, I would love for that to be auto-synced to both my server and that of my co-founder. Will Syncthing allow me to do this easily and will it be appropriate for an application like that?

nodata 12y ago
It will do what you describe, but since you are handling large files you should know that Syncthing currently doesn't do dedupe, so if you rename or move a file, or have multiple copies of it, it will sync the whole file again. Changes within a file that don't move are handled efficiently.
- marcamillion 12y ago
  If I am not mistaken, you can't do dedupes on media files, right?
dublinben 12y ago
It sounds like you could be using Tahoe-LAFS. There are also a number of other distributed file systems.

scrrr 12y ago

Is there a paper / doc explaining, how the synchronisation works in detail?

emsy 12y ago

Yet another sync app is Pyd.io The Web UI is super neat, and you can choose between various backends for storage. Pyd.io offers its own sync app which I found to be horribly slow. I'd suggest to use Pyd.io as a frontend and BtSync/Seafile/Syncthing as a backend.

akumen 12y ago

We love to through around the words "alternative" and " replacement" it is neither until it is as easy to use/deploy as X for the average Joe. You know 90% of people out there who would't be able to out the words 'git', 'deploy' and 'heroku' in the right order as their eyes glaze over in confusion.

biocoder 12y ago

Have you checked Hive2Hive? Something similar but not yet there. https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive https://github.com/Hive2Hive/Hive2Hive

nicoruti 12y ago
In contrast to Syncthing, Hive2Hive is more a library, providing an API for any kind of program that requires file synchronization. Another major difference is that Hive2Hive is written in Java and not in Go.
seppi 12y ago
It would be quiet interesting to point out the differences between Hive2Hive and Syncthing... H2H uses for example a DHT as underlying peer-to-peer technology.

jms703 12y ago

++ this effort. I'm looking forward to replacing my current BitTorrent Sync (btsync) setup with Syncthing.

grey-area 12y ago

This project's aims seem very similar to the earlier camilstore project, also written in go: https://camlistore.org https://camlistore.org Anyone know how it compares?