Central management for syncthing clients

User Stories
1

I recently setup syncthing at my company. My aim is to share tons of files between designers and engineers. My setup is an always-on-introducer node running on a small nas and normal nodes on each company computer. I could have choosen central sync, but the NAS is really slow and would probably limit the sync bandwith.

The setup went really smoothly but required me to interact with each employees pc at least once. And the same happens if some body leaves the company.

I suspect that it is not in the scope of syncthing, but I really would like to know if anyone has ever thought or even build something to manage the setup of clients centrally. I would like to able to add and remove shares for all devices and add new devices while only interacting with my introducer. The file sync it self should of course still be decentralized.

2

MetroThing existed for a while, but it seems to be unmaintained (and not compatible with Syncthing 0.11) now…

3

This software seems to be extremely out-of-date even the github repository was deleted during the last weeks. Are there any other efforts in that direction?

4

Ah yeah so it has. I’ll remove it from the list of third-party software :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I’m not aware of any other efforts in this area, unfortunately.

EDIT: Ah, the author has already removed it, citing “Had to deprecate the solution, no more time to maintain it due to job and other constraints.”

5

I guess one option here would be to have single master folder which contains the folder and client config for all other machines. Would that be feasible or would syncthing be completely confused if the config file changes behind its back?

EDIT: But I guess in order for this to work properly also something like an include directive would be needed for the syncthing config.

6

may I ask: what do you need to edit the “nodes” for? for example: In the case of adding a new folder, you need to go there anyway. cant imagine the purpose so far…

7

I would not rely on Syncthing to distribute its own configuration. Since config.xml is just plain text, I would use simple tools like startup scripts, batch files and robocopy to setup all devices - especially if all devices are configured the same way (e.g. same Syncthing path C:\Syncthing, same folders shared, etc.) On the server/network drive you can have a central template config oder even grab data from a DB to customize the config for each user or device. Then if you change something on the server it’s just a matter of time until all users log on and get the update.