ReadOnlyButReceiveNew

Feature
1

Hello, I am currently setting up my environment consisting of servers and clients (laptops and android phones) with Syncthing. But I am afraid, that bitrot might cause problems (see Six years evaluating backup software). The servers (debian on top of zfsrootmenu) are protected against bitrot by using ZFS.

I would like to have “ReadOnlyButReceiveNew” functionality: i.e. the servers would get new files from the laptops/android phones. But once the file are received, they are ReadOnly.

By using this approach, the servers would protect the files against bitrot (by using ZFS on the servers) on the server side. But when bitrot occurs on the client side (i.e. laptops, android phones) the ReadOnly will prevent the bitrot to propagate to the servers.

Is that feature already implemented ? Would that be a good feature?

Best wishes and many thanks in advance. Dirk

2

This seems to me like a use-case that would not be widely used.

Would it make more sense to use a backup solution with versioning on your servers instead?

3

After reading through the documentation I found the feature “ignore delete”, which goes into the right direction.

An additional feature “ignore change” would help a lot. Just by selection these features on the server side we would get a ReadOnlyButReceiveNew functionality. What do you think?

Best wishes and many thanks in advance Dirk

4

I wouldn’t count on adding new features to this one. ignoreDelete is already a not recommended and not supported configuration (i.e. you can use it but you’re on your own with it).

This is because Syncthing’s main purpose is two-way synchronisaton.

5

If you are already running ZFS, this is something you can realize with snapshots I think.