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

161–170 of 233 posts

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#161

Post by mPReDiToR »

dolni wrote: post #145
bipson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing I really like about syncthing is that it does what it is supposed to do very well (besides very seldom glitches), while not being dropbox, nextcloud, owncloud, etc. but p2p and entirely independent of any external tools/devices/etc. The second thing I like is that it is a successful FOSS project, meaning it works and is being regularly and often improved by its users. Your comment, as helpful as you m…

> and by god, if a better solution is so obvious to you, why haven't you proposed it yet, or - god forbid - made a merge/pull request?? Because there isn't any obligation to? Why do you think you would be entitled to ask for that?

"Entitled to ask"?

I think freedom of speech allows for it.

Can I have a million pounds, from you personally, please?

Also, that might be the small nudge which potentially has a user actually contribute in some circumstances.

I'm not sure your question is fair.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#162

Post by bsdubernerd »

syncthing is excellent for sharing also between groups.

I wish it worked better for occasional file sharing (for example to transfer files between phone/pc). I don't want to keep it running in the background - just sucks too much power, and on the phone I never need to keep other stuff synched. But the time it takes for the first connect to happen after starting it can be in the order if minutes on a known network, dozens of minutes if not. Not usable for this purpose.

The android client is also not very well thought out. You cannot "share to syncthing" until it's active, so if you want to put a file for sharing until your network connectivity is up, you can't. You have to start it, share, then shut it down. If you want to do that on an unknown network you didn't whitelist, you have to whitelist the network as well. Kind of pointless. You'd think you can also start it when it prompts you to change the settings, but this also doesn't work.

I ended up disabling all these advanced settings, as they clearly end-up being an hindrance. I just start it manually and quit it, kind of defeating the entire purpose of them.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#163

Post by 0xADADA »

commoner wrote: post #52
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...

or its a tech startup that just named it 'Castle' spelled with a K-elo to make it unique

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#164

Post by inside_out_life »

bsdubernerd wrote: post #162

syncthing is excellent for sharing also between groups. I wish it worked better for occasional file sharing (for example to transfer files between phone/pc). I don't want to keep it running in the background - just sucks too much power, and on the phone I never need to keep other stuff synched. But the time it takes for the first connect to happen after starting it can be in the order if minutes on a known network, d…

for fast occasional sharing you have KDEConnect

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#165

Post by flanbiscuit »

I use Syncthing to sync my KeepassXC db file between laptops and my android, always on a local network. For the most part I like it. I get a lot of conflicts though and I can't use ediff (or similar) because the file is encrypted. Curious if anyone has figured out how to fix conflicts with Keypass db files because I don't think Syncthing's conflict resolution can handle them very well.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#166

Post by wingmanjd »

MightyOwl13 wrote: post #76

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 concep…

Lawrence Systems videos are great! I've learned so much from them and have implemented quite a few things at $WORK or home due to their videos.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#167

Post by aasasd »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #157
aasasd wrote: post #155

On Android, Syncthing-fork is a bit nicer because it has a native app interface instead of the embedded web interface. However, on Android 11 the Play Store release doesn't work with folders other than /Android/media or the app's data folder or something like that—because of Google's continuous crusade against file access, effective for the newer API level that Syncthing-fork is targeting. But the F-Droid version doe…

Syncthing-Fork can't send broadcast mDNS packets on Android 11. As a result, two Android 11 devices can't even connect to each other over a LAN, and are reduced to sending all traffic to the Internet and back, which wastes bandwidth, probably hurts privacy, and throttles transfer speeds. The workaround I found was to hard-code one device's IP address in the other. Perhaps Syncthing is unaffected; I didn't test. Link:…

Hmmm, I guess it only affects discovery between phones, because I just recently re-set up syncing with two laptops, and it worked fine without entering the IDs or ips or anything—just clicked on the discovered IDs.

Of course, this issue still highlights how the ‘open-source’ and ‘customizable’ OS does only what Google allows it to do.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#168

Post by Disparallel »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #165

I use Syncthing to sync my KeepassXC db file between laptops and my android, always on a local network. For the most part I like it. I get a lot of conflicts though and I can't use ediff (or similar) because the file is encrypted. Curious if anyone has figured out how to fix conflicts with Keypass db files because I don't think Syncthing's conflict resolution can handle them very well.

KeepassXC has built in db file merge support! It's hidden somewhere in the menus. I've never personally had to do something more complicated than "I added a new entry on two different devices before syncing" but it's worked well for me so far.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#169

Post by miki123211 »

fps_doug wrote: post #137
miki123211 wrote: post #136

I have to pitch Resilio Sync (formerly Bittorrent Sync) here. It's a proprietary, more polished alternative that offers a freeware license for personal use. My biggest issue with Syncthing was that there was no auto-discovery, if you had 25 or so computers across a group of friends, you needed to set up 25^2 connections, which wasn't really feasible. Not sure if this is still a thing, but Resilio solves this perfectl…

Syncthing supports introducer devices. If you mark a device as introducer, you'll automatically add all devices the introducer knows to your list. So basically adding a new device to an existing group requires everyone to agree on one introducer, and everyone will add the new device automatically. NAT traversal and relay servers exist too. So seems it's pretty much on par with Resilio, plus open source.

For my specific use case, there's probably no device that could be an introducer.

It's all PCs, none of them online 24/7.

Besides, setting all that up requires way more technical knowledge than most people have. Sure, I could do it I guess, but explaining Resilio configuration to complete non-techies is hard enough.

Post reply on HN