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Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

syncthing.net

211–220 of 233 posts

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#211

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…

Are you sure that encryption software has no vulnerabilities?

What if encryption keys are stolen?

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#212

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…

There's Mobius, a third party client for iOS: https://www.mobiussync.com/ . I've never used it, so I don't know how good it is.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#213

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…

[deleted]

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#214
post #202

Glad to see another option out there for file sync. Browsing the FAQ I noticed: To further limit the amount of CPU used when syncing and scanning, set the environment variable GOMAXPROCS to the maximum number of CPU cores Syncthing should use Are they using an environment variable shared by other Go programs? Seems like bad practice... why aren't they using a variable or or switch that's unique to Syncthing instead?

If you would use that variable, you wouldn't set it globally. You would set it only for the syncthing process. For example, when you use systemd to run syncthing, you can configure the environment for syncthing in the unit file. Other Go programs on your machine won't be affected.

I wonder if my annoyance stems from a difference between Windows vs. Linux conventions?

I hark back to when environment variables were set globally on a machine (back in DOS days).

I realize NTVDM emulation introduced the ability to configure more granular ones (eg. system vs. user) and you can now create a shortcut[1] that launches an intermediate step which tailors the environment for a single process. But always viewed that as a cludgey convenience for users, not a design paradigm for developers. (Also with at least six[2] different places to check for where Windows envvars come from, I typically favor the expliciteness of command line switches).

What happens if someone's creating a script that will shell out simultaneously to multiple Go programs? Do they all inherit the parent's environment variables? Does the script now have to tailor the same-named variable for each one?

Am I doing something wrong or is this easier on Linux and us Windows schmucks got left behind?

Thanks for any elucidation...

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3036325/can-i-set-an-env...

[2] https://flylib.com/books/en/4.53.1.59/1/#:~:text=Environment...

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#215
post #211

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…

Are you sure that encryption software has no vulnerabilities? What if encryption keys are stolen?

I could say that both projects are open source, but no, i haven't audited them. Cryptomator has been audited by Cure53 (https://cryptomator.org/audits/2017-11-27%20crypto%20cure53....)

In any case, i guess it depends on your threat model. I have no illusion that a sufficiently determined attacker will gain access to my files, but that's true no matter if i store the files at home or in the cloud - We're talking files accessible "on the move" here, so it's not like i can just airgap the server.

The cloud offers far better physical security than what i have at home, and if not better, at least equal network security with dedicated teams on board to resolve issues.

The (major) cloud also offers far more geographical redundancy (Google 3 sites, Apple 2-3 sites, Microsoft 2 sites), each with redundancy in power/internet/hardware, as well as fire/flood protection.

And of course, the most common reason for broken encryption is a weak password, so don't do that.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#216
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that encryption software has no vulnerabilities? What if encryption keys are stolen?

I could say that both projects are open source, but no, i haven't audited them. Cryptomator has been audited by Cure53 ( https://cryptomator.org/audits/2017-11-27%20crypto%20cure53.... ) In any case, i guess it depends on your threat model. I have no illusion that a sufficiently determined attacker will gain access to my files, but that's true no matter if i store the files at home or in the cloud - We're talking fil…

Files encrypted with rclone were actually plaintext for about a year:

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1894...

Because a developer didn’t know the pitfall of taking a random seed from the current time.

Cryptomator takes encryption from a Java library. I don’t know the quality of this ecosystem. Searching it in HN doesn’t return much.

With cloud, you need to clarify if the provider and governments are in your model or not.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#217
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could say that both projects are open source, but no, i haven't audited them. Cryptomator has been audited by Cure53 ( https://cryptomator.org/audits/2017-11-27%20crypto%20cure53.... ) In any case, i guess it depends on your threat model. I have no illusion that a sufficiently determined attacker will gain access to my files, but that's true no matter if i store the files at home or in the cloud - We're talking fil…

Files encrypted with rclone were actually plaintext for about a year: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1894... Because a developer didn’t know the pitfall of taking a random seed from the current time. Cryptomator takes encryption from a Java library. I don’t know the quality of this ecosystem. Searching it in HN doesn’t return much. With cloud, you need to clarify if the provider and governmen…

> Files encrypted with rclone were actually plaintext for about a year:

It had a severe weakness yes, but it was not plaintext. From the CVE : "dictionary of all possible passwords with about 38 million entries per password length". For an attacker to attempt to break the encryption, they also still need to defeat the cloud providers security measures like 2FA.

> Cryptomator takes encryption from Java library. I don’t know the quality of this ecosystem.

Considering that it's used by banks/goverments, i'd say that it's probably either full of backdoors, or at least somewhat OK :)

> With cloud, you need to clarify if the provider and governments are in your model or not.

I have no illusion that i can keep encrypted files out of government hands, or any other sufficiently motivated attacker. One could argue that the data might even be better protected in the cloud than in my home. Also : https://xkcd.com/538/

If storing illegal content is "your thing", you'd be better off looking for other solutions.

My personal needs are storing maybe not generally sensitive files, but files i consider sensitive, like photos of my family, tax documents, etc. It's all files that would probably not make much of an impact if they were public available, but i prefer keeping them private.

The thing about encryption is that if you don't trust it, it doesn't make much sense using it at all. That goes for both cloud and private. The threat vectors are different, but one could argue that a datacenter network is probably better protected than the average users Zyxel/Netgear/whatever router that probably has about a dozen unpatched CVEs, along with an ISP "backdoor" if supplied by the ISP.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#218

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…

I tried Syncthing, then I tried Nextcloud, and for the goal of just syncing camera roll and backing up my password manager, they were both a bit of a hassle. Now I use Minio with FolderSync (Android App, I use the paid one, but the free is perfectly capable) to backup my camera roll and I wrote a very simply WebDAV server in Go to backup my (Android) password manager DB which only supports WebDAV, I sit NGINX in fron…

> I considered Bitwarden, but I don't want to run the Mono/Windows server container, and I don't want to rely on the Rust port which is behind in features and is susceptible to the upstream breaking APIs.

"The server project is written in C# using .NET Core with ASP.NET Core." https://github.com/bitwarden/server

Seems like alternative DB providers is in alpha stage right now.

Mono and netcore is not the same, netcore is one of the more wonderful things I've worked with if I'm to be completely honest. Then again, I also kinda like PowerShell

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#219

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.

Only specific apps will get approval to offer full access to the disk. Gallary app, maybe. Audiobook app from some unknown developer? Maybe not.

Re: Syncthing – a continuous file synchronization program

#220

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 don't think the changes in Android 11 are catastrophic. I'm using Syncthing on Android 11, and Syncthing can read/write to any directory in the filesystem under /sdcard, with the exception of the /sdcard/Android/data directory (private app data). Syncthing does request the "All files access" permission that gives it access to most of the filesystem. I'm not sure about external SD cards, though, since I haven't test…

Thanks for the tip. I was using that data directory, assuming it was representitive of the full access.
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