I have a Question

First things first: Yes I looked into the faq and even tried to Google my question.

I’m not using syncthing (yet). I want to know if it fits my usecase. Does syncthing have any kind of access managment / read only users/ guest users? I want to add files into my synced folder. This folder should sync to folders on other devices with another “user”. But that user shouldn’t be able to delete or modify files in the folder. And the user shouldn’t be able to put any other files into the folder. The other “user” is also me in my special case. This means I have hardware access to that devices (for exchanging the id between the devices). But because of security requirements that user shouldn’t be able to mess up the folder in any way (this means not just a checkbox inside of the settings but another user with a password or a keyfile is required for write access).

So can syncthing do this? As I know Dropbox can do this, giving access to a folder to others. But you should know why someone should prefere Syncthing over Dropbox.

If I’m understanding it correct the answers here: Is Syncthing for us? say that it’s not possible. That’s sad because a simple key requirement for write access on other devices folders would make this tool so much more powerful. That would be like just 3 lines of code (creat new random write-access-key in settings + send write-access-key + check if write-access-key matches) if it wouldn’t be a big effort for me to find the right place to add it I could theoretically write the needed code change here.

Knock yourself out.

Well I don’t know why my Google search didn’t lead me to that post. But seems like it’s a function that haves high demand. And it’s really trivial to implement. Just publish a public key together with the folder. Changes to that folder propagated to the p2p network must be signed with the private key or they get ignored by the other clients. Syncthing seems to be already great the way it is (just tested it now on Android) but it misses a really big chance of beeing way more powerful with using write access keys.

Update: I digged further and found many projects which exactly tried this and all of them are death now. Seems like some dark force takes care that nobody implements this. And I also understand now that Syncthing copied the idea/functionalities from the property bitcoin sync stuff (don’t know the exact name). This explains why it won’t get implemented here because the mentality of the core team is possibly “if BitTorrent didnt do it than there is no reason for us to do it neither”.

Wow. Just wow. Actually I should stop at this. I can’t.

Yep, that’s Syncthing’s private and stealthy mafia taking care nobody else does it, so we don’t have to lift our asses to do it.

How did bitcoins/blockchains come into this? :slight_smile:
You probably mean btsync/resilio (no coins there, except in their pocket due to the pro version).

That’s too ridiculous for more of a reaction.

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I am still sitting here waiting for that trivial 3 line PR to show up.

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I thought btsync did in fact support read only users with just a shared key? This is one of the things they actually do well that we don’t?

Also: it’s warm. I’m troll proof. :slight_smile:

Wow looks like BitTorrent got autocorrect to Bitcoin? But people want always throw Blockchain into p2p projects this days don’t they?

And I’m not talking about the Syncthing Mafia, I’m talking about the Mafia which is denying the syncthing developers of doing that. That would explain why it’s still alive you know.

Oh and about the 3 lines:

At the part of the code which propagades a folder first time to an device: privateandpublickey= cryptographiclibrary.generatekeypair; foldername= foldername + funkyescapecharacter + privateandpublickey.getpublickey

On the recieving end publickey = extractpartafterescapecharacter(foldername); foldername=extractpartbeforeescapecharacter(foldername);

##comment: yes I used the foldername for the transfer because I know that that one gets transmitted. If you know the code, you can transmitted the public key seperatley in a much better way

Now if a change in that folder is propagated:

change.append(cryptographiclibrary.sign(change,privateandpublickey.getprivatekey);

On the recieving end If(cryptographiclibrary.issignedcorrect(extraxtactactulchange(change),extractappendedsignature(change),publickey){ change=extraxtactactulchange(change); dowhatthefuckingfuckyounormalydowith(change); } else{ dofuckingnothing(); ## or log that a fucker tried to betray you }

##90% of this code is wrapping in and reextraxting the cryptographic keys. You don’t need to do it this stupid way if you are familiar with the Syncthing code, which I’m not.

" I thought btsync did in fact support read only users with just a shared key?"

if that’s the BitTorrent sync thing than everything makes even more sense. BitTorrent is that dark force.

Update: The fucking keys could even be exchanged out of band, you must do it for the id anyway. Only the creation the signing and the checking would be required. Would have extra benefits, some peers could use other key pairs so that the they would obtain each others changes while others don’t. It’s not a usecase that I would need but this doesn’t mean that others wouldn’t be in need of this.

No no, I am waiting for the 3 line change in Syncthing, not 3 lines showing me how to sign shit.

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It would indeed please many users to have an HTTP/WebDav interface and guest users but this is not the (original) design of Syncthing. It’s all trust-based synchronisation (currently). But people are free to fork and play with different concepts with no restrictions at all. IMHO for mobile access I would like to access my syncthing files from the web without burning my battery on my iPhone with fairly power hungry BEP protocol (hashing et al). I really dislike Owncloud/Nextcloud. But currently I live with the fact it can’t access my files from anywhere except a safe syncthing client.

I’m having the Pull Request tab open on auto-refresh, I don’t see any PR passing by with 3 lines of code for making this happen. Just create a POC and show use the code instead of shooting noise into the universe.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

  • Linus Torvalds (2000)

Signing data is the only thing needed for this feature.

Sure, so as I said, I am waiting for that 3 line PR adding support for this to syncthing given it’s that trivial.

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I did

Cool, so we’re done here, everyone can go home.

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Yes. I won’t use my time to search the right place for the simple signing to ad if the developers which wrote that code know the place anyway but are to lazy to bother. Instead I will look if Librevault works ok enough at it’s final state and if not than I would prefer to use my time to do changes on it’s code instead of Syncthing. Doesn’t look like Syncthing deserves the feature it’s lacking.

Lol, you are funny. Go ahead and move on to Librevault then. Be safe!

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