Re: sync netbsd drive with Windows 10

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.htmlOn Tue, 15 Oct 2019 at
14:49, Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Bob Bernstein <poobah%ruptured-duck.com@localhost> writes:
>
> > On Mon, 14 Oct 2019, David Brownlee wrote:
> >
> >> I've had good experiences running syncthing to sync data between a
> >> set of NetBSD boxes (some directories being master on one machine
> >> only and pushing out, others allowing changes from multiple
> >> ends). Its cross platform. It might be overkill for just two boxes,
> >
> > What's "overkill" is me taking the time and trouble to put together in
> > one place all this files! <g>
> >
> > I will consider my inquiry asked-and-answered, and give syncthing a
> > test spin around the block.
>
> Another thing to look at is unison.  It runs when you ask it to, shows
> you what it wants to sync, and then you say ok.  unison is in ocaml, but
> we have a very good history of that working, even on old platforms
> (c.f. haskell and rust!),  I have no idea how that works on windows.
>
> I don't mean to criticize or contradict syncthing at all.  I use that
> too, and it has worked very well.
>
> Just keep in mind that if you do multilateral sync among N machines and
> any one of them is flaky about their fileysstem that may propagate.  So
> do not view an N-way syncthing replica as a backup, even though it
> functions as a backup against total loss of a disk.

+1 on unison working well, and very much +1 on multilateral sync
synching removals you may not want - I had a syncthing directory setup
with one node as Send only and the others as default. When I lost a
disk on one of the other nodes and brought it up without that disk it
happily propagated the removal of all those files to the other backup
nodes (not to the Send only master obviously). I wouldn't have minded
but it was filesystem with around 5TB of data so repropagating it took
a while :). Lesson learned - keep the other nodes as Receive only in
that setup (they still sync changes from the master among them), and
enabling file versioning :)

Both Unison and Syncthing have good support for keeping older versions
when changes occur
- https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html
- https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/stable/unison-manual.html#prefs
If you have the space, spend some of it to enable these features on
filesystems where you might care :)

David