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Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

syncthing.net

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Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#61

Post by poisonborz »

I repaced Dropbox with it a year ago and I'm satisfied, it's a great project. But atm I couldn't recommend it to even knowledgeable friends, let alone family members:

- Sometimes long-deleted folders pop up when older version clients connect

- Syncing or connecting takes sometimes ages to start for no obvious reason, client not giving enough info on what is happening

- Relation between clients is not obvious, the powerful configuration options are hard to decipher after some time

- The project could start a (freemium?) cloud client option, maybe leveraging other providers for storage. Most people will not be able to set up a server, and without that it's just way less practical for the layman than any mainstream option.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#62

Post by commoner »

deaddabe wrote: post #54
colordrops wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Another alternative for contact, calendar, and task syncing is EteSync, which is end-to-end encrypted:

https://www.etesync.com

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#63

Post by francis-io »

With Android 11, I think this breaks my use case. Android 11 apps, with a few exceptions, can only access files they create. You can add in a "grant all" access, but google limits that to certain apps, like file sharing apps.

My use case is I want to "de-cloud" my life, and use syncthing to push things like wireguard keys to my phone, along with backing up photos and pushing down audiobooks and music. I bought a fairphone 3+ with the idea of it being a forever phone, but I couldn't get things working on liniageOS 11 or /e/ os on android 11. I could stay on android 10, but things will eventually migrate to target the new SDK.

I also have the issue with syncthing not being able to write to an external SD card, which was one of the selling points for me for the Fairphone.

I would love a solution to this, because I'm really stuck in the water on this.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#65

Post by MightyOwl13 »

octopoc wrote: post #56

Syncthing is not as good as Resilio Sync at syncing huge folders quickly. Resilio Sync can sync 10 MB/s on my wired home internet, but Syncthing usually uses only about 1-8 MB/s. Not sure why.

I started using Syncthing a while ago and its blazing fast. If you do LAN syncs, try setting fixed IPs to your devices in your router and when pairing them in Syncthing use their ips in the address field instead of using Dynamic.

So in my case my server would be 10.0.0.1 and I have two devices, let's say 10.0.0.10 and 10.0.0.20, I would putmy servers IP in as tcp://10.0.0.1:22000 in the settings page.

You can then even disable most of the doscovery options (if not all). Curios if you will see improvements!

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#66

Post by zibzab »

francis-io wrote: post #63

With Android 11, I think this breaks my use case. Android 11 apps, with a few exceptions, can only access files they create. You can add in a "grant all" access, but google limits that to certain apps, like file sharing apps. My use case is I want to "de-cloud" my life, and use syncthing to push things like wireguard keys to my phone, along with backing up photos and pushing down audiobooks and music. I bought a fair…

What if you use termux and backup from its storage?

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#67

Post by therealmarv »

francis-io wrote: post #63

With Android 11, I think this breaks my use case. Android 11 apps, with a few exceptions, can only access files they create. You can add in a "grant all" access, but google limits that to certain apps, like file sharing apps. My use case is I want to "de-cloud" my life, and use syncthing to push things like wireguard keys to my phone, along with backing up photos and pushing down audiobooks and music. I bought a fair…

Maybe I'm not reading it right but I've Android 11 and can see with my gallery app all image files saved to sdcard from all sorts of programs which contradicts your statement. There is still a lot of shared space on the file system.

It's a good thing in general that other apps cannot access other's app internal files.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#68

Post by Maakuth »

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've dealt with the Android issue by configuring Syncthing to only run when the phone is charging. I'm in the habit of leaving my phone to charger every night anyway, so I'm regularly synced. It would be great if there would be a 'Sync now' function though, that would run the sync and then go back to ordinary mode afterwards, for the rare case that I need my folder synced in the instant.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#69

Post by raek »

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…

On Ubuntu (and probably other distros that use Systemd as well) you need to enable the user service manually once for your user:

    systemctl --user enable --now syncthing.service
This will start syncthing whenever your user session is active. By default that means when you login. If you run this command:

    sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER
Then your user service manager will be started at boot and run regardless if you are logged in or not. (The default behavior makes more sense on desktop and laptop computers.)

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#70

Post by 8fingerlouie »

I used to be a user of both Syncthing and Resilio Sync, but i've replaced both with regular cloud storage with Cryptomator or rclone+crypt instead (Cryptomator for clients).

It turns out that the power consumption of keeping redundant hardware running at home is about twice as high as just buying the same storage in the cloud, and then you need to figure in the cost of hardware as well.

I.e. Microsoft Family 365 can be had for €60/year (with HUP), and offers 6x1TB OneDrive storage. With power at €0.44/kwh, you have a power budget of 15W before your home server costs more than the cloud offering.

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