is there perhaps some way to define a local folder as “receive only” for data safety reasons (because it has 100,000s of files you wouldn’t want to accidentially mass-delete), then working in the local folder during the day, and in the evening see all e.g. 17 files that you have changed locally in a list – so that you can quickly see what would have to be synchronized back to the remote folder.
Ideally, there would be a way to then manually start the sync-back process.
What you should do instead:
On the other side were you want to prevent accidental deletion, run syncthing as a dedicated user, and remove write access for those files that you don’t want to get deleted.
Your specific request:
You are essentially asking for a receive-only folder (doable already) and https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/2710. You could still do it by setting the folder to receive-only, then at the end of the day check the locally changed items, then set the folder to send-receive if those changes look sane. The at the beginning of the next day go back to receive-only. At least that’s what I would expect to happen, it might be a corner case that isn’t implemented (as in this may not have been done before) - thus there is a chance this might do something wrong. If you go ahead with this and **** happens, you have been warned (backups, backups, backups).
I actually need write access to all those hundreds of thousands of files and folders in the master folder, however only in daily ‘homeopathic’ doses like a few dozen files/folders.
I might try your manual workaround, although I am somewhat reluctant to do so – because I literally won’t survive another case of unwanted mass-deletion in my master folder :o
Have you seen that it has a GUI? It really is pretty simple, well-designed and comprehensively documented in my opinion - don’t get discouraged by plenty of options, you don’t necessarily need them.
I’ll have to be frank here: Please don’t. It was a mistake to propose it.
You come up with varying aspects of your setup, bring up mass deletions again and again in various contexts and I have yet to see any sign that you have an overall plan for your setup or that your understanding of how Syncthing operates is improving. That might just be missing information or me being tone-death, but it’s the impression I get at the moment. As such I urge you to take a step back and think about what you want to achieve and only after that what tools and setup can help you do that. If you do that and would like to hear an opinion on the whole thing or ask questions on it, I’ll be happy to do that. However I feel I might be doing more damage than good by answering your isolated questions.
If unpacked, the respective zip file yields the following:
unison 2.48.4 GTK.exe
unison 2.48.4 text.exe
unison-fsmonitor.exe
When I start the first *.exe I get an “procedure entry point not found” error message.
The second *.exe shows an empty DOS box and disappears instantly.
The third*.exe shows a DOS box with the words “VERSION 1” in it which does nothing.
So I am really at a loss with Unison.
I understand that you come to this conclusion after reading all of my posts where I basically show that I don’t have much clue about the dangerous things I’m doing. And I agree.
I think what I will do now is absolutely leave the Master Folder in send only mode, and literally copy my daily ~17 files over manually.