I love Syncthing, but have been researching for 2 days now trying to get ST to run as a service - i.e. when you boot a machine, BERFORE logging in, the service runs and synchronises files.
I can do this on Windows machines easily, but have not been able to get this to work on Linux machines - specifically on Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon with ENCRYPTED Home folder
I am new to Linux, but have 30 years Windows sys admin experience - so did not think it would be this hard.
I have read and re-read, installed, with and without firewalls, uninstalled, rebuilt computers from scratch or used Time Shift to ensure continuity every time I try a new set of instructions - all to no avail. The service runs when I’m logged in but doesn’t when I reboot and don’t log in.
The errors vary according to the set of instructions I have used to do the install and service configuration.
I am really hoping this is user error (!) because ST works really well - but I can not use it if it will not run without logging in…
Any help would be much appreciated, as I am beginning to lose the will to live
I believe that the two statements above are mutually exclusive.
IF it is in some way possible to achieve what you are attempting, I believe that it would be pointless to encrypt the home directory because the key/password would anyway have to be stored on the machine for it to be used before you log in.
So my take on this is that you need to choose ONE of these:
Yes - I do understand your point of view, but was hoping Mint could be configured in a similar way to Windows machines - i.e. access can be gained to encrypted storage without logging in to the machine first. (Credentials can be passed remotely).
I assume Linux servers must have a way to share encrypted storage?
On desktops I use, logging in and then syncing isn’t an issue - but for server type use it’s not really doable.
It’s not hard, but Linux offers a greater variety of options compared to Windows, so pairing the right solution with the use case is the most important step.
The problem isn’t specific to Syncthing. Any background application that needs access to encrypted data has to deal with the same issues.
It would help to know…
What’s the risk profile? – i.e. Fear of what scenario?
How are the files being used on the Linux server and wherever they are being synced to?
