Why not just use rsync -a periodically over an encrypted ssh connection? It work...

aniviacat · 2024-09-29T22:45:08 1727649908

> If you really want to be fancy, you can deploy a script to watch files for changes and do rsync immediately when it happene.

I use a tool that does that, it's called Syncthing.

EGreg · 2024-09-29T22:50:13 1727650213

Yeah but if you’re just syncing everything to and from a server anyway, why bother with it?

Plus, rsync -a never deletes files.

vetinari · 2024-09-30T09:54:28 1727690068

Because you want syncthing to delete files more often than not. When you want the reverse, it's a single property on the shared folder (ignoreDelete), feel free to set it.

zelphirkalt · 2024-09-30T20:10:25 1727727025

Is that ignoreDelete a Syncthing setting or something on the file system?

vetinari · 2024-09-30T21:16:14 1727730974

Syncthing setting, per shared directory: https://docs.syncthing.net/advanced/folder-ignoredelete.html

ta2234234242 · 2024-09-30T03:45:47 1727667947

Plus why doesn't sync thing support rsync protocols anyway? It's not like it couldn't, right?

LeoPanthera · 2024-09-30T05:06:36 1727672796

They're not the same thing. rsync is unidirectional, and only between two endpoints. One side is always overwritten by the other side.

syncthing is bidirectional, syncing changes in either direction, and supports syncing any number of clients, not just two.

Watching and syncing immediately - yes, that's what syncthing does. Why reinvent it with something worse?

dmd · 2024-09-29T22:41:30 1727649690

You can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

EGreg · 2024-09-29T22:49:22 1727650162

Not sure why this would be easier or better

FTP is not encrypted. Unless you use SFTP maybe. (I wrote an SFTP and FTP-over-SSH client in Visual Basic like 20 yesrs ago lol).

And even then, you miss out on all the optimizations with prolly trees and other goodness that rsync has.

No, sorry, that solution sucks. CVS? That’s super outdated.

fallingsquirrel · 2024-09-29T22:59:14 1727650754

It's a reference to the infamous dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Anyways, if you're at the grocery store and you need to see your shopping list, and you're happy with your current workflow of opening up Termux and typing `rsync -avrsomgwtfbbq me@server/shopping-list.txt` with your thumbs, then by all means keep doing that! For the rest of us, there's Syncthing.

EGreg · 2024-09-29T23:03:34 1727651014

Yeah but on the substance, none of your countrexamples make sense

SyncThing doesnt actually have an iOS client that syncs reliably. I tried some, when I was test driving it and Resilio Sync and others.

https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045

On your phone you’d probably just visit a website, and access your server via HTTP.

soupbowl · 2024-09-30T03:16:42 1727666202

I sync files across Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and Android. Your solution wouldn't work for me as easily as Syncthing.

boring_twenties · 2024-09-30T13:59:59 1727704799

That isn't going to handle possibly conflicting changes from more than one source.