Given send-only folder A in device DA paired with receive-only folder S in device DS, is it possible that newly added .stignore patterns in A can purposely result in the deletion of matching files/folders in S?
And if not directly via A’s .stignore, is there some other syncthing magic that can accomplish pattern-matched deletion of files/folders in S?
Use case:
DS is my receive-only “server” sharing its folders via SMB with all my send-only “clients” (DA, DB, DC, etc.). In this way all my clients gain (read-only) access to all files/folders originating from my other clients
When I add a new type of client, it’s only after syncing its entire user folder, that I see what I should have ignored (such as Library and .DS_Store with a Mac client).
So I add those to A’s .stignore. And, I also now want those existing files/folders in S matching A’s new ignore patterns to be deleted from S.
There is no built in functionality to do this, sorry. I run into the same thing occasionally and it’s annoying. The proper way, such as it is, is to first delete the files and let that propagate, then add them to ignore patterns. (And then move the files back, if you didn’t actually want them deleted on the source.)
Got it, thanks. Unfortunately I’m unlikely to do temporary deletions on the source machines, being somewhat risk averse :^)
Question: Does re-scanning a folder with an existing database go faster than scanning from scratch?
I wonder if you could recommend a series of steps to get the two folders in perfect sync after modifying sender’s ignore patterns?
Subject to:
No temporary deletions on send-only folder A.
No ignore patterns on receive-only folder S.
If re-scanning is faster than scanning from scratch, then re-use folder A’s existing database, rather than removing both folders and starting from scratch.
Because for unknown reason my Mac client is slow in scanning (and syncing), compared with my Ubuntu client. I’ve temporarily put the Mac in “high-performance” mode, but haven’t modified any syncthing parameters.
Maybe the answer is removing and recreating destination folder S, leaving source folder A alone, and then letting them resync?
Any advice along these lines would be appreciated.
Yes thanks, great idea, probably the sane way to solve this.
I didn’t want to start ignoring existing files in the receiving folder, due to OCD :^) So I ended up starting from scratch with the receiving folder. From the source sender’s perspective, I am still curious about performance difference when re-scanning with an existing database after adding an ignore pattern vs. scanning from scratch? Is it faster because syncthing can just look for the new ignore pattern(s) in it’s existing database?