I am the computer teacher in a computer room with 11 Windows 7 machines. Now I need to set up a synchronization of all Documents folders so when some student save something on one computer, this content to populate on all other machines. Thus it is not so important on which computer the student saved his files - they would be on every computer.
What I started doing is to share all Documents folders on all computers. For example I have these names of some of the computers: LIME, ROSE, SUNSHINE, APPLE, ARTIST. Everyone of these computers has its own Documents folder. So when I share the Documents folder from LIME to APPLE, Syncthinc does not merge the two folders but make a new one with a cryptic name like “brpfs-kjhew”.
This is not what I want. I want a shared common folder which synchronizes the content of all computers.
Please tell me how to do that. All the computers are with Windows 7 and I instruct the students to save their files in the Documents folder (Which is part of the Libraries).
This is the folder ID, which is a unique identifier for a folder, but indeed no good name for a folder. You probably enable the “Auto Accept” feature. This means Syncthing will choose the folder root directory itself, which may result in directories that you see. I’d suggest disabling this and manually adding the folder. Thus you have control over where the folder root will be.
My main problem is not the cryptic folde name, but that Syncthing does not merge the folders with the same name but from different computers. Do you think that if I disable the “auto accept” option, I will be able merge the upcoming folder with the already existing one?
I. e. if LIME shares its own Documents folder with ARTIST, would I be able on ARTIST (when I accept the shared folder) to tell Syncthing to puth the content of the shared folder in ARTIST/Documents and to update the content of LIME/Documents with the new content from ARTIST/Documents?
What you call “merge” means folders that have the same ID (not name). If the ID is different between two folders, they will never sync. I.e. you need to add the documents folder with the same ID on every device, or you add the folder on one device and select all other devices for sharing. Then you will get a notification to add folders (with equal ID) on those devices. That’s the “normal” way of doing things.