I have two Intel machines that I’m trying to sync so as to make match as closely as possible. Both are running Debian ‘Buster’, w/ KDE as the window manager. I want to sync all the stuff in my home directory, including configuration files for all the software I have installed, so that I don’t have to keep manually replicating the setups. (one machine is a laptop, the other is a desktop, but I don’t think that should matter)
Every time I try to create a folder with just the home directory in it, ST gives dire warnings about syncing the ST config, key, etc. files. I have tried adding the ST files to the ‘ignore’ list in the configuration menu, but it doesn’t get rid of the warnings… I have read most of the docs, including configuration, ignoring files, etc. and can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong…
Can someone suggest the proper way to set this up? (maybe a sample ignore file w/ the ST stuff in it?) Also are there any other non-ST files in the /home folder that I really DON’T want to sync?
Currently I have a bunch of folders, one for each of my subdirectories. If I’m understanding the docs, if I create a folder for /~ that would contain all of those, I’d want to kill the individual subdirectory folders, Correct?
Other than this problem w/ getting things set up, I really like ST, seems to be a great program.
If you are sure that you want to sync the configuration files like that, then you can simply ignore the warnings and leave them be. Syncthing will still sync those files regardless.
You can also hide them in the Web GUI with custom CSS, if they really annoy you. There is no way to disable them permanently, unless you modify the source code and recompile the program yourself.
By the way, as you are mentioning “backing up”, if you set your folder to “Send Only”, then the warnings should disappear too.
Thanks, I DON’T want to sync the ST configuration files, since I understand from the docs that doing so will break things badly…
I DO want to sync everything ELSE in my home directory, so that things like my KDE configuration settings Firefox bookmarks, and so on for all my programs are kept the same on both machines…
My basic use case is that I have a relatively fancy desktop machine w/ lots of storage, fast CPU / Graphics card, etc. sitting on my desk at home. I have a studio in a maker-space where I do a lot of my computer stuff and a decent Lenovo laptop that I do it on. Currently if I want to work at home, I have to lug the laptop back and forth, which is a bit of a pain. I want ST to keep the two machines as identical as possible, so that I can leave the laptop at the makerspace and use the desktop at home without having any missing files, or needing to deal with different configurations, etc…
If I’m understanding the documentation, it SHOULD be possible to tell ST to not sync it’s own configuration files while still syncing everything ELSE in the home directory, I just can’t figure out the way to do it. It seems the “ignore patterns” section of the folder creation window should be the way to do this, but nothing I put there seems to get rid of the warnings.
Please remember than trying to sync your home directory like that will only work if you make sure everything has got synced before starting working on the other machine. If you plan to use both at the same time, there will definitely be problems with programs overwriting their own files.
To put it simply, you need to close Firefox on the laptop and let the files sync before launching it again on the desktop, and vice versa.
I think syncing things like firefox profiles didn’t work in the past, as it uses sqlite, which is a database that uses mmapped files and wal logs, so you just end up with conflicts and corruption all over the place if its ever opened in two places.