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Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

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Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#101

Post by libeclipse »

hparadiz wrote: post #98
HKH2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yea but it doesn't matter. The clean from gradle deletes the folder entirely and creates a new one in it's place. I don't care. Just sync the path. That's all I need. Instead Syncthing literally stop syncing ALL folders because "oh no something went wrong". For whatever reason open source software always has these weird edge case engineering "solutions" that really aren't that great. If someone was actually a paying…

It's easy to open a pull request instead of complaining

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#102

Post by rob74 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #40
Tomte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is "you have to manually copy files around every time you want to use them" "works flawlessly"? Have you not seen how stuff is supposed to work with cloud storage providers in iOS? Because it's indistinguishable in function from local on-device storage.

Maybe it works flawlessly inside the limitations that non-Apple iOS sync apps have?

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#103

Post by TheFreim »

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…

> One solution that I will try is to install a headless Syncthing instance on my NAS

I've got an old computer which I run things on occasionally. I installed syncthing on it for a while and it worked well. Stopped leaving that computer on so now when there's something that needs to be synced between my desktop and laptop I just use my phone as the middle always on server.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#104

Post by hikarudo »

raek wrote: post #75

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 s…

> I've been thinking about solving the backup part by letting one of the devices perform btrfs snapshots on its storage.

I do zfs snapshots on my storage server (home desktop), which is in Syncthing's "receive only" mode. I use it to sync my camera roll and Whatsapp media files from my Android phone. I use pyznap for snapshot management.

> Setting up a cron job / timer unit that commits the synced folder to a git repo is also an alternative

Another option would be to backup the synced folder using a backup tool like borg, restic, duplicacy etc. They have options to prune the snapshots.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#105

Post by dspillett »

zibzab wrote: post #66
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?

Since recent Android updates my termux setup hasn't been able to access other application's data. I use rsync via that for backing up content, it still works for things like camera output, but not things like the files & config from my podcast app.

Though it turns out I've been negligent and not noticed the Play installed versions are no longer maintained, so they may have worked around whatever the issue is. I must get around to reinstalling via f-droid...

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#106

Post by rglullis »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #94
rglullis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a NAS with syncthing and a dappnode at home. The dappnode runs Storj, which I allocated about 2TB. It is paying me now about 6€/month, which is barely enough to cover the electricity costs and the cost of the drive. It certainly hasn't helped to cover any of the cost from the NAS. Decentralized solutions are always going to be less cost-effective than central services. We still should do it anyway. Optimizing f…

> It makes us fragile and susceptible to any change in their terms. Which is why you should backup your data locally (or somewhere else), but even if self hosting, you should still have a backup of your data. I personally backup everything at home, and if/when their terms change, it's simply a matter of restoring data onto the new solution (local or remote), and i'm up and running again.

Yes, of course. Syncthing is not a backup solution. Luckily the amount of data that I have that is considered private and valuable is not that much (~100GB of family photos and videos, some scanned documents) so my backup strategy has been good old SneakerNet. I have a couple of thumb drives that I leave with family, and occasionally get them back to check/refresh.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#107

Post by grandchild »

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…

yes the .stfolder is a minor nuisance most of the time, but it's a lifesaver if for some reason or other your folder gets removed or a mounted device is no longer there, or one of a hundred other things that can go wrong with a folder.

then you _really_ want syncthing to stand back and hold its hands up, instead of syncing deletion events to all connected devices or sending all your friends your entire home directory or something like this.

imo, it's a good safety tradeoff, and like so many of those (e.g. short vs long passwords) they might seem annoying most of the time, but prevent incredible damage that _one_ other time.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#108

Post by 8fingerlouie »

rglullis wrote: post #106
8fingerlouie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes us fragile and susceptible to any change in their terms. Which is why you should backup your data locally (or somewhere else), but even if self hosting, you should still have a backup of your data. I personally backup everything at home, and if/when their terms change, it's simply a matter of restoring data onto the new solution (local or remote), and i'm up and running again.

Yes, of course. Syncthing is not a backup solution. Luckily the amount of data that I have that is considered private and valuable is not that much (~100GB of family photos and videos, some scanned documents) so my backup strategy has been good old SneakerNet. I have a couple of thumb drives that I leave with family, and occasionally get them back to check/refresh.

I keep my data in the cloud, a local (versioned) backup, and for irreplaceable data like photos, i also burn identical M-disc media at least every year. One stored at home, another in a remote location.

While i will probably have worse problems to deal with in case the cloud disappears and my local data is gone as well, chances are that once those are solved, my family photos will not be a problem after those :)

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#109

Post by oauea »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #39
vegai_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Okay, I guess I should qualify that and say that there's no iOS client that is actually practical to use . NextCloud integrates into iOS's Files app pretty tightly as a 'storage provider' or whatever Apple calls it. End result is that my password database is magically up-to-date whenever I go to use it in my password manager, probably because Files sees an app trying to access the file, pings NextCloud to say "yo, is…

It's Apple. You are of course welcome to pay their exorbitant development fees yourself, go through the insane review process and publish your own competing app!
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