Sharing Send Only Folders Should Create Receive Only Folders On Shared Device

Feature
#1

First off, I’ve really been loving Syncthing lately. I’ve used it to chain together a bunch of my devices for automatically backing up photos and documents. Thanks for all the hard work everyone has put into this project!

I’m not entirely sure if I’ve missed a toggle somewhere, but I’ve noticed an oddity around sharing send-only, receive-only, and send-and-receive folders to other devices. To my mind, it would make sense that if I have a Send Only folder on a device and I choose to share it with another device that has the origin device set to auto-accept, it should set the status of that folder it creates as Receive Only, rather than defaulting to Send and Receive. Or if I create a Receive Only folder on this device and share it with my other devices, they should create a Send Only folder on their end. For some reason, this doesn’t seem to be the case, but I also can’t seem to find a toggle or switch anywhere to fix this. This means that if I want to create something that only pulls to one device from all others, I’ll need to manually correct this on each device otherwise they’ll start sending data between each other, when I only want it to flow in one direction (hence choosing send/receive explicitly).

Is this something anyone else has had to deal with? I can’t tell if this is a bug or an oversight, but either way, this seemed like the best place to drop it.

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#2

It’s actually intended I think, there is usually no reason to have the other side as receive only if yours is send only, as they effectively lead to the same behaviour.

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#3

They don’t lead to the same behaviour though. Because they are send and receive by default, if there are other devices connected that get this folder, they will sync that file between each other, wasting bandwidth for nothing. So it’s fine if you only have one device to share with, but once you have any others, it becomes and issue

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#4

On the other hand, you’re asking that someone configuring a topology that isn’t a star network be mindful of the order they configure nodes in, lest they need to manually fix up every one of their nodes. Why should your preference be the default, and not theirs?

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#5

No idea what a “star network” is, but from an end user standpoint, it makes sense to me that if I can only accept things on the device I share from, the other devices surely would only send them. If this isn’t the case for potential difficulties with inexperienced users, I totally understand. Perhaps not the default, but as an option or toggle, this would be greatly useful. For me, I have my phone set as an introducer and with auto-accept on every device in my chain I connect it to. Some folders are there only to pull from the other devices, like if I want to drop files or folders there to sync with Google Photos or post to Instagram. Other folders are there to send files and folders to those other devices, but this does not mean that I want them to sync between each other independent of my phone all the time either, especially in cases of changed or removed files. The current system requires that I manually change every single device I add, which defeats the purpose of me using auto-accept in the first place.

To clarify, I’m not necessarily asking that the defaults be changed, but rather that this functionality actually be an option outright, perhaps with an extra setting/toggle to make this the case, while also expressing confusion with the verbage and intent of the current system.

#6

Ah!

You probably should have mentioned auto-accept more prominently, I think I get what you’re asking for now. It’s really the interaction between auto-accept and those folder types that’s at stake here. I haven’t used it much myself, partly because it doesn’t give much control over the folders created work - in particular, always going to the default folder hasn’t been working well for my overcomplicated filesystem setup.

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#7

That’s a very good point! I think I start getting ahead of myself when I write sometimes xD Yeah, auto-accept is what makes this more critical for me than not. I definitely wouldn’t want to suggest changes that break existing solutions for people, but am really interested in being able to share folders to my other devices that get auto-accepted that don’t require me having to manually re-configure the folder on each device once they’re connected. It’s probably an edge-case TBH, and I’m starting to realize that more :sweat_smile:

#8

Soon(.TM) there will be configurable folder defaults, which will make this discussion about which use-case is the more common/important/consistent/… a less impactful: Users will be able to choose themselves. E.g. your use case should be covered by setting the default folder type to receive-only on the device where folders are auto-accepted.

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