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Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

syncthing.net

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Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#51

Post by HKH2 »

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…

If you put a non-empty placeholder file in that folder, it won't be empty any more, so it shouldn't be removed.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#52

Post by commoner »

nett18 wrote: post #48

Something that interests me even more is that the company behind, Kastelo Inc., possibly bears its name from the esperantoan word for 'Castle'. Can anyone confirm?

You're probably right. Kastelo previously launched a service called Arigi that was later discontinued. The announcement notes that "arigi" means "to amass · to gather · to put together" in Esperanto.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IAwDkf...

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#53

Post by aborsy »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #41
commoner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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:/…

...the whole point of syncthing is that you avoid "the cloud" and all its privacy nightmares. I'm baffled people do this.

That’s why I put “yes” in parenthesis.

Synchting supports end to end encryption. So you can use cloud storage with encrypted folder, for connectivity (no need for relays NAT traversal etc). Clients sync through an always-on peer.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#54

Post by deaddabe »

colordrops wrote: post #27
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.

For the contacts and calendar I still use the VPS, but with radicale [0] instead of Nextcloud. The resource usage is minimal, probably the attack surface too. And I like the do one thing and do it well mantra (in this case, CalDAV/CardDAV).

[0] https://radicale.org/3.0.html

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#55

Post by reacharavindh »

nuerow wrote: post #44
reacharavindh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped taking them seriously when they wrote - “ I saw that it complained that the .stfolders did not exist. So I went ahead and created them, but by mistake, I created empty text files instead of empty folders. Did not realise it and left it to work in the background.” First, backups! Never trust any software to not have a bug. Secondly, if you don’t know what you are doing, may be don’t create random config file…

> Secondly, if you don’t know what you are doing, may be don’t create random config files and hope the software deals with it. This sounds like a variant of the old "you're holding it wrong" blurb. The problem you're commenting on actually describe a multitude of problems with the application, specially how it causes data loss if it's config happens to get corrupted. The comment about the need to back up data also se…

No, I wasn’t saying the thing about creating config files in the same vein as “you are holding it wrong^tm”. Any software would crap out if you manually give it wrong/empty config files - that is only reasonable. Sure, if you’re worried about the config file getting corrupted without user interference, that’s a bug. I’d also be pissed if I were the author of the project and someone complained by saying - “I deleted the config file your software uses, and I am not a fan of your software because it doesn’t magically heal itself and protect against users such as myself”.

No! Syncthing is _not_ a backup system. They explicitly say so, and it should also be obvious that a “syncing system” may try to backup some stuff, but you cannot rely on anything that can _delete_ stuff to be called a backup.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#57

Post by deaddabe »

Daegalus wrote: post #31
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…

try out Synctrayzor for the laptop and desktop. it lets you set it to auto start on boot.

Thanks for the suggestion. This is an app for Windows [0] but everything I use is Linux, so the setup to start SyncThing it at boot should be straightforward.

I am more worried about the Android part. The best solution would be to start SyncThing when on my LAN via matching SSID, and disable it when I am out of range.

[0] https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#58

Post by Tor3 »

fretn wrote: post #38
pacifika wrote: post #36

It refused a few files with unusual characters in their file name, so you’ll want to periodically check the logs, as it is stricter than the host OS. Apart from that, all good

Do you happen to have a list of these unusual characters ?

It seems to be anything which isn't either ASCII or UTF-8. My father's PC had files written by old versions of OpenOffice (when it was called StarOffice), with "native" names but before his PC was set up to use UTF-8. Early versions of Syncthing didn't have problems with those files, but later versions refused to back them up. I had to rename all those files one by one to get it working again.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#59

Post by scambier »

I really like Syncthing, I have it installed on my computer, phone, and VPS, but it's definitely not made for non-technical users. I have a "family" folder with a few important documents that are also shared on my girlfriend's computer and phone, but I use Resilio Sync for those.

While Resilio is slightly less secure (debatable) than Syncthing, their UI and UX are vastly better, and virtually no different than something like Dropbox or Google Drive. I fully understand that Syncthing's developers have different priorities than UI and UX, but I'd love to see it become more mainstream.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#60

Post by jorislacance »

gnulinux wrote: post #8

Is there an obvious way to use this with rclone?

I guess it is more one or the other depending on the use case.

I've been synchronizing local data to remote data using NFS and Syncthing for a while now instead of doing batches of rclone, if you were referring to this use case.

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