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Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

syncthing.net

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Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#71

Post by iforgotpassword »

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…

I wouldn't expect apps to require android 11 anytime soon (years). Android 4.4 was supported forever. Things get ugly when 10 doesn't receive any updates anymore.

But even with the versions before 11 things were a chore with many vendors putting aggressive power saving features in their phones that are hard if not impossible to disable for some chinese brands, sometimes the app not restarting after the app store pushed an update, etcpp.

I tried to de-cloud my dad with it, but eventually the app would stop running for some reason after a few days or weeks and nothing would get synched. Because otherwise, the technical foundation, especially the nat traversal is superb. I ran a mini pc in his home with ST that would receive all the photos from the phone. Zero maintenance, no port forwardings that I would have to re-do if the provider switches routers or the settings reset or what not, no dyndns for reachability. He was travelling in thailand, vietnam and elsewhere and the pictures just kept coming in. A reliable version of PhotoSync that uses the syncthing protocol under the hood would freaking kill it.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#72

Post by rglullis »

therealmarv wrote: post #67
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.

I'm not an Android dev, but IIUIC your photos and images are made accessible to the gallery app through the ContentProvider API, i.e it does not have direct access.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#73

Post by raek »

raek wrote: post #69
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 a…

More information: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html#using-system...

The Debian/Ubuntu packages ship all the needed files. You only need to activate them.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#74

Post by flipbrad »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #70

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…

I use far less than 15W using an old laptop or RasPi their cost is negligible over their useful lifetime

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#75

Post by raek »

Regarding backups... Syncthing is great for propagating changes to all devices, but does not offer much in terms of backups and previous versions of files. (And I'm fine with that. I consider that to be out of scope for Syncthing.)

I've been thinking about solving the backup part by letting one of the devices perform btrfs snapshots on its storage. Does anyone know about any write-up that describes or compares such solutions?

Setting up a cron job / timer unit that commits the synced folder to a git repo is also an alternative, but has some disadvantages: stores contents twice (once in the sync folder, once in the git object database), and pruning older versions is difficult (git is mainly built to keep all history).

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#76

Post by MightyOwl13 »

I'm not affiliated with the channel in any way, but Lawrence Systems did a really good overview. It's what convinced me to switch to it and use it for LAN sync with my server keeping everything from my phones, laptops and desktop. It's also good for those who might have trouble understanding how it's supposed to work. I think my biggest difficulty was with the fact that normally it doesn't necessarily have the concept of a "server" per say, but once I understood this and organized it in such a way that my server WOULD behave like a server, the rest was pretty easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5O4ajGWZz8

And same url on an Invidious instance - https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O5O4ajGWZz8

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#77

Post by deaddabe »

commoner wrote: post #62
deaddabe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I access radicale via an nginx proxy with proper HTTPS (LetsEncrypt) and an HTPASSWD over that, so the setup is secure. However radicale default setup is not secure, I agree.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#78

Post by deaddabe »

raek wrote: post #73
raek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

More information: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html#using-system... The Debian/Ubuntu packages ship all the needed files. You only need to activate them.

Thanks! I will use the enable-linger on the NAS running 24/7, and configure it using a remote browser (probably via SSH tunnel). This way I can always sync to NAS even if everything else is off, and the laptop/desktop will sync from the NAS when required.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#79

Post by jiggunjer »

phil-martin wrote: post #45
nuerow wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It may have already been used as a backup system, but it was not made for that, and they even answered that in their FAQ. It was this question that stopped me setting it up, because it made me realise I was after a backup solution, not just a synchronisation tool " Is Syncthing my ideal backup application? No. Syncthing is not a great backup application because all changes to your files (modifications, deletions, etc…

this is why I prefer the 'conservational' sync option from Google. If you delete a file it prompts you if you also want to delete remotely. Sure, it doesn't prevent bad overwrites but that's what git is for.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#80

Post by raek »

deaddabe wrote: post #78
raek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More information: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html#using-system... The Debian/Ubuntu packages ship all the needed files. You only need to activate them.

Thanks! I will use the enable-linger on the NAS running 24/7, and configure it using a remote browser (probably via SSH tunnel). This way I can always sync to NAS even if everything else is off, and the laptop/desktop will sync from the NAS when required.

I saw just now that there are also system units (started with "systemctl enable --now syncthing@USER_NAME_HERE.service", note the lack of --user). If you use those then you don't need to activate linger. Using those is probably considered the more standard way of doing things on an unattended server.
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