Hi, I’m asking for a new synchig rule needed for someone in some cases:
I,m using syncthing to save pictures from phones to the nas, and I’m interested in a one way only setting let me deleting pictures on the phone without deleting them on the NAS.
Actually I configured phones as sendonly and NAS as Receiveonly. I would like to have the possibility to use NAS just as a collector, so syncthing work ONLY when it finds new pictures (every file), but it isn’t interested in pairing empty folders.
This way should be helpfully so in this situation as in the situation when anyone want to use syncthing as a collector from multiple sources.
It could be realized adding an option on the sending phone and/or on the receiving NAS into the current existing options “send only” and “receive only”.
Another possibility could be to create a NEW rule called for example like “Simple collector mode” as for “send only” as for “receive only”.
After that synkthing can always be used to sync the collector directory to another directory for backup pourposes, so doesn’t matter if phones or the microsd or the rom will became unusefull.
You see, Syncthing’s purpose is synchronization, and it’s made to do exactly that. The main purpose is omnidirectional synchronization, but there are ways to make it a one-way synchronization (Send-Only/Receive-Only), and many people (including myself) use that for various purposes.
The point of synchronization is to make sure device A has the same files as device B at the present moment. What you seem to want is making sure device A has all the files device B had ever or at various moments in the past. This is not called synchronization, this is called backup, and there’s a lot of software for that. Syncthing is not a backup solution, and was never planned to be one.
If you really want to make Syncthing a backup software, you can certainly do that: it’s open source, and you can add whatever functionality you desire. You may also then contribute your additions back to the project, and the maintainers may consider adding the functionality you will have written to Syncthing for everyone’s benefit. However, please keep in mind that Syncting is meant to be synchronization software, not backup software, so maintainers may not be really eager to include that functionality.
And in any case, please do not expect anyone currently working on the project to develop that functionality for you. The developers that currently make Syncthing came to work on it exactly because it is what it is (see the link above), and if any of them wanted to work on a backup software project, they would be working on rsnapshot or some other software instead of Syncthing.
I don’t think there’s much interest in developing what you’re suggesting for the reasons that Evgeny mentioned above. Syncthing is primarily for keeping two devices in sync.
As to your specific problem, you might be able to make use of the trashcan or simple versioning options on the NAS to keep files after they are deleted on the phone.
Thanks for your answers and yes I understand that syncthing is a syncronizing software, just I found it very helpfully because it works on linux, windows, mac, android, it works on pcs on nas’ on phones, this is why I would like to have it working with this alternative feature, because with the same software (and it seems to me with a little addon) it could do more than what it does. Anyway any backup software that I know doesn’t do what I’d like it did. Backup softwares make backup, simple or featured, but it seems to me in a complex and expensive way. Unfortunatelly I’m not a programmer: I don’t know where to start to add my help into this project, better then asking about it.
It’s perfectly OK to combine different software to achieve what you need. For example, you could use Syncthing to have a folder synchronized between, say, your desktop computer, your laptop and your phone, and then use some backup software to backup that folder on one of the computers.
Closer to your original post: you could have your NAS sync the photos folders with two (or more) phones separately, and then use something else (I would go for rsync, but you may prefer something else) to copy all the appearing photos from those folders to one “collector” folder…
Rsync hasn’t a GUI to config and it need to be launched every time or need to be scheduled (another command to set). For evey variation we Need to modify the command line and anyway we need to know options to set. Syncthing could do the same during its normal connections and can do it on any OS because it alredy works on any OS, so without the need to schedule anything and write settings.
Yes, you can say that rsync is simple to use and that it uses less data tranfer, but the system anyway should do similar things two times: to read, to compare datas and to copy if needed, two times, one time for every softwares.
It’s in my mind and maybe it could work not as I expect to be, howover it shouldn’t be thought like a substitute of rsync with all the rsync options, exaclty because it isn’t a backuping software as you said. Just having two graphical options to say to Syncthing that it doesn’t have to delete files on the destination directory and eventually to add (and not overwrite) files with the same name but different syze (or checksum) but simple create a new version of that.
Don’t worry because I insist on this.
Thanks for your help, and Happy new year to the full staff
Thanks, but believe me, I used this option at the first, but happened that so for deleting files on phone as for changing phone after setted it to the previous configuaration, all pictures disapeared on my NAS. Yes I found them into version folders but not couldn’t put them back into the primary folder: everytime deleted again, so I need to keep version folders and the fear to delete them for error forgotting this after some time (Not correct for me).