Linux / Windows dual boot with shared SyncThing directory

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1

I am building a new system that unfortunately requires Windows so I need a dual boot. I am afraid I have not seen things spelled out in detail, so I’d like to ensure I don’t screw up any existing data as I already use SyncThing to share a good amount of data between my machines.

I have separate NTFS and ext4 boot partitions for booting Windows and Linux respectively. A built a third partition which is NTFS and is accessed by both Linux and Windows. At present, I have SyncThing running only under Linux and the directories are up to date.

For my purposes I have created the following which are the same data just with different names for the two OSes:

/mnt/Shares << Linux ntfs formatted /dev/sdb1

D:\ << Windows ntfs drive

, and

/mnt/Shares/SyncData << Linux SyncThing shared folder

D:\SyncData << Windows SyncThing shared directory

, and

/mnt/Shares/synconfig << Linux Syncthing configuration data

D:\synconfig << Windows SyncThing configuration data

So if I understand things what I need to do is:

  1. Shut down SyncThing (maybe not strictly necessary but seems a reasonable precaution.)

  2. Copy the contents of /home/MyUserName/.config/syncthing to my place on the shares NTFS partition, namely /mnt/Shares/synconfig. This is not a directory that is synchronized by SyncThing but a directory that will appear for both Linux and Windows.

  3. Set the Linux start command to point the “-home” parameter to the directory create in the above step such as: /usr/bin/syncthing -no-browser -home="/mnt/Shares/synconfig" Instead of the usual: /usr/bin/syncthing -no-browser -home="/home/MyUserName/.config/syncthing"

For Windows, do I add a similar -home in the batch file to start SyncThing? Something like: start “Syncthing” syncthing.exe -no-console -no-browser -home=“D:\synconfig”

Probably something others would not be afraid to experiment with, but, as I said I’m already sharing a fair amount of data and don’t want to loose it.

2

No, you have to symlink the index directory, copy the certs but keep the configs separate as they contain the absolute path where data lives.

3

Could I get a little more specific help?

“symlink the index directory” - I assume this means I can’t start with Linux but must create the first instance in Windows as Linux can read NTFS filesystems but Windows can’t read ext4 so I must create the SyncThing directories in Windows and then link in Linux - is that what you mean? Where do I create the links, do I replace the directory in my Linux config directory with a link to the Windows one?

“copy the certs” - I can only find a single file in my config directory with the name “cert” namely “cert.pem” so I copy that? Where do I copy it to, I mean do I copy the Windows cert.pem into config replacing the Linux file?

Thanks

4

You have to share all of the files between the two instances, apart from config.xml. config.xml has to be different, as the absolute path to the location where the folders are is different.

How you achieve that is up to you.

5

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