How Often Does a Machine Download Remote Changes?

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1

Reading the documentation on scanning, what I understand is that periodic scanning and filesystem watching are methods that Syncthing use to determine when local changes have been made, and Syncthing then sends those changes to remote machines that are synced.

However, does Syncthing have a separate mechanism that it uses to determine when remote changes have been made? Or is it up to the remote machine detecting its local changes, and our machine will receive them only when that happens.

If that’s the case, then what happens if my machine is turned off at the time when changes on a remote machine are detected and propogated out? When does my machine get those changes?

Thank you!

2

Nodes exchange index information once a connection is established and determine which files need to be synchronized.

If your PC is turned off, it will simply catch up on index updates after reconnecting.

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3

Ok got it. To make sure I understand it fully, in the follow scenario:

1. Turn Computer 1 off
2. Make changes on Computer 2
3. Turn Computer 2 off
4. Turn Computer 1 on

Computer 1 does not get the changes that Computer 2 made, right? But if I never turned Computer 2 off, then Computer 1 would have gotten the changes once I turned it on.

Am I understanding it correctly?

4

Yes. For use cases where devices are rarely/never on at the same time, the usual approach is to add a third device that is always (or mostly) on. Like a VPS, a raspberry, a NAS or similar.

This way (in your example) Computer 2 can sync to the third device and then Computer 1 can pick them up from there, independent of Computer 2.

5

Got it, that makes sense. Thank you!

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