Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

syncthing.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 233 posts

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#21

Post by deaddabe »

I have switched from Nextcloud to Syncthing. The former was a resource hog that was eating up too much everything on my modest VPS.

I share the files on my local network at home between phone, laptop and desktop. My only issues so far:

- I need to manually start Syncthing on the devices, whereas Nextcloud was always running on boot. Not sure if I should start it every time, especially on the Android phone which cannot sync while away from home. I do not want to empty the battery while outside of my LAN, + the persistent notification "Syncthing is running" is annoying.

- I need to power up at least the laptop or desktop to backup my phone data. One solution that I will try is to install a headless Syncthing instance on my NAS. This way the phone can always sync to the NAS every time, and then laptop/desktop can sync from NAS when needed.

The joys of peer2peer! At least, I am sure that my moderately sensitive files are not leaving my local network to be stored on my VPS, which can be hacked someday.

I also need to figure out how to install Wireguard on my router to allow to access my NAS from my phone while on a trip, but that's another story.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#22

Post by Tomte »

vegai_ wrote: post #16
KennyBlanken wrote: post #5

Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and folders fairly easy. The separation between folders and devices is handled well. You can easily have half a dozen shared folders between several computers with any mix-and-match combination including which one is 'authoritative' and so on. I used to use it on…

>The biggest bummer is that there's no iOS client. https://www.mobiussync.com/

Second this.

Works flawlessly, is rather cheap, and the developers encourage donations to the main SyncThing project.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#24

Post by commoner »

deaddabe wrote: post #15
iszomer wrote: post #9

It's sufficient enough for my needs. I use Joplin with it as well as no-frills file syncing across my home network. Just a note on revision history: it's better to configure this feature on the notetaking app alone while disabling it on Syncthing. My only gripe is that this utility may soon become deprecated as Android continues to update their convoluted storage schemes.

Can you share a reference wrt evolving Android storage schemes?

Android 11+ enforces scoped storage, which restricts access to the filesystem in many cases.[1] Syncthing requests the "All files access" permission[2] to get around this, but the /sdcard/Android/data directory (private app data) is still off limits.[3]

[1] https://source.android.com/devices/storage/scoped

[2] https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/manage-a...

[3] https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/issues/1638

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#25

Post by antman »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #5

Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and folders fairly easy. The separation between folders and devices is handled well. You can easily have half a dozen shared folders between several computers with any mix-and-match combination including which one is 'authoritative' and so on. I used to use it on…

My iOS Nextcloud is stealthily paused when in the background (a few kb/s e.g. just enough for notices) as I think most iphone apps. So it is not competitive with apple backuo.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#26

Post by commoner »

aborsy wrote: post #23

A couple of questions. * Is there an iOS app on agenda? * Can I choose something like S3 or even Dropbox (yes!) to be a central server (more precisely a peer)?

* There doesn't seem to be much progress on an official iOS app, but it is something that users are asking for.[1] An unofficial closed source app called Möbius Sync does exist for iOS.[2]

* S3 and Dropbox are not officially supported,[3] but you can always sync one of your Syncthing nodes to cloud storage on your own.[4]

[1] https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/102

[2] https://www.mobiussync.com

[3] https://forum.syncthing.net/t/how-to-sync-files-with-aws-s3-...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18135903

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#27

Post by colordrops »

deaddabe wrote: post #21

I have switched from Nextcloud to Syncthing. The former was a resource hog that was eating up too much everything on my modest VPS. I share the files on my local network at home between phone, laptop and desktop. My only issues so far: - I need to manually start Syncthing on the devices, whereas Nextcloud was always running on boot. Not sure if I should start it every time, especially on the Android phone which canno…

I have a hybrid, where I don't use the sync features of next cloud, but do use the contacts and calendar. Syncthing is setup to sync to the Nextcloud files folder, and a nextcloud config option (forget the exact option) allows Nextcloud to immediately pick up the files that syncthing dropped.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#28

Post by [deleted] »

hparadiz wrote: post #14
KennyBlanken wrote: post #5

Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and folders fairly easy. The separation between folders and devices is handled well. You can easily have half a dozen shared folders between several computers with any mix-and-match combination including which one is 'authoritative' and so on. I used to use it on…

The thing with the .stfolder file is annoying as hell. I use it to sync the build output folder for my Android builds but sometimes I need to run a clean and it wipes out the folder. Syncthing's developers for whatever reason just can't seem to grasp that sometimes I could careless about a folder's history and just need my files synced. My fix it to run `touch .stfolder` in the build directory which fixes it but seri…

[deleted]

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#29

Post by p2t2p »

vegai_ wrote: post #16
KennyBlanken wrote: post #5

Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and folders fairly easy. The separation between folders and devices is handled well. You can easily have half a dozen shared folders between several computers with any mix-and-match combination including which one is 'authoritative' and so on. I used to use it on…

>The biggest bummer is that there's no iOS client. https://www.mobiussync.com/

Yes this. Best money I’ve ever spent on software

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#30

Post by sneak »

Syncthing is great, but bear in mind in the default configuration (unless you set STNOUPGRADE=1) it will automatically download a replacement binary and exec it, granting the developer remote code execution on your machine at any time, Solarwinds-style.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27933308

No-interaction autoupdate really should be opt-in. It's super dangerous software otherwise. Anyone with release credentials could own many many thousands of machines with a single action.

Post reply on HN