I’m putting my question here, hope it’s the right place.
Until recently, I used ST to sync my music collection and some files (~30GB) between my phone and my pc, and everything worked smoothly and wonderful!
Then I wanted to add two more devices to this scenario, making my pc the “master device”. But still, I noticed that ST always wanted to sync the other devices directly, instead of only syncing them with my pc. I guess that’s what ST is supposed to do, hence it is announced as a “peer-to-peer” syncing software.
So I set up a Nextcloud instance on a small SOC, that was lying around in my drawer. That one is working, but it is very slow and needs lots of resources.
To cut a long story short: is it possible to use ST as a replacement for Nextcloud in a small home network, with one device as the “server” that holds all files that are to be shared, and 3 or 4 clients that only sync to the “server”?
is it possible to use ST as a replacement for Nextcloud in a small home network, with one device as the “server” that holds all files that are to be shared, and 3 or 4 clients that only sync to the “server”?
I know nothing of Nextcloud.
You can easily set up a hub and spoke topology for Syncthing peering. Remove any Remote Devices that you don’t want communicating with each other directly from both sides. If you have an Introducer set up, consider turning that off.
I’m happy to help with this request but it’s not clear to me that there is a negative impact in allowing a full-mesh-peering topology.
I have used ST before, but I can’t remember what is an “introducer”?
About the mesh-peering: I tried that once with three devices, and somehow it got from “meshed” to “messed up” Most probably I made some heavy mistakes in the settings, and the result was terrible.
But I’m willing to give it another try, and I’d like to take up your offer to help. I don’t think it’ll be necessary for you to talk me through every little single step, but a general overview would be nice, especially what traps to avoid, when setting up 4 devices to be synchronised.
By now, all files to be synchronised are stored on my pc drive only. Of cause, my pc will not be activated 24/7, and that’s where my Raspberry is meant to jump in: it is to become the “master device”, that will always store the latest version of all files.
What would be the right sequence of tasks to perform:
Is it better to
a) first copy all files to the Raspberry manually, then configure ST on the Raspberry and add my pc, my notebook and my phone one at a time,
or
b) should I just start by synchronising my pc to the Raspberry and then simply add the phone and the notebook one at a time to enlarge that “circle of exchange”?
Unless there are a ton of files to move and it will take too long to do it with Syncthing, in general I agree with @mraneri’s proposed approach.
My opinion of the Introducer feature is that it’s best used for much larger Syncthing clusters than I have, or that you seem to be putting together. Easier to just do Syncthing peering manually when it’s a small group.
It strikes me as unlikely that a full-mesh Syncthing model would break something that a hub-and-spoke model would not.
I use Nextcloud for calender, file sharing (documents, photos, …) with my family and/or friends and use some apps from the NC ecosystem for family photos: memories, mediaDC etc.pp.
BUT I don’t use the NC client on my 24x7 running linux desktop/server at home at all! Because it can only run when user is logged on at the desktop which is not the case for all family members! So I decided to use SyncThing for syncing all my files (some 100k!) to an external storage on my NC server:
NC has internal files (this is mostly empty in my setup) and also external storage like SFTP, WebDAV, S3, … (which can be a Storagebox from Hetzner or S3 from AWS…) which works pretty fine
So for me it’s not a full replacement, but an enhancement. With ST you can’t browse your files on a smartphone - all or nothing!
Hello and thanks to all who have given me ideas, hints and who shared their experience!
I will definitely give ST a try in my setup, because Nextcloud does not keep its promises completely: NC is supposed to synchronise files and folders automatically, without the user having to take care about it. But, unfortunately, NC can’t keep that promise for total, because the Android client does not synchronise without user activating each synch. Furthermore, the folders that are to be synched between my PC and my phone will be created in a subdirectory that NC creates by itself. That is very unpleasant for other apps that are expecting their files in certain places. Last but not least, the KDE desktop client does not work very well either.
I have used NC many years ago, and back then it worked very smooth and reliable, but, sadly, those times are over. Things like that seem to be bound to happen once a software gets commercialised too much, I guess.
So, it’s not going to be Nextcloud for my setup.
If ST2 is around to happen, I think I will wait with my setup till then. A fresh installation sounds safer to me than an upgrade.
Most probably I made some heavy mistakes in the settings, and the result was terrible.
- but I don’t know any similar solution for iOS 