Syncing on shared drive on dual boot computer?

Support
1

I have a computer running dual boot between Windows and Linux with an internal NTFS drive which I use to share data between both OSes.

I want to keep a folder on this NTFS drive in sync with another computer.

Would it be possible to run Syncthing in both Windows and Linux with the folder on the shared drive?

Or would Syncthing become confused because two Syncthing instances (one in Linux and one in Windows), with different indexes, keys, IDs etc, would effectively be managing the same folder on the same drive?

Thanks

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If I understand correctly I can either:

  1. Share the entire configuration directory and launch with -home=... on each OS, and use symlinks so the folder path in the configuration (eg ~/Data) is valid in both OSes.
  2. Share just the certificate so both OSes get the same device ID.

Is option #2 really enough to ensure there is no confusion or conflict between the OSes? Wont them having separate indexes for the same folder on disk cause problems?

Thanks

4

Re #2, with 0.10 it should be fine, with 0.11 you might get a ton of conflicts after startup if you don’t share the index between the two instances.

5

Could you elaborate on how 0.10 and 0.11 work differently in this regard, or point me to the right place?

6

0.10 doesn’t handle conflicts, it just takes the newest version of the file hence no conflicts, 0.11 does handle conflicts. At the point it will exchange indexes it might see that it’s vector clock is ahead of what it has in the database (because the other OS has increased it) and assume that it had it’s index reset, hence marking all files as conflicts (but I think only if they are different, which they probably shouldn’t be in your case).

7

Hi, is the a final word by the developers how to handle multi boot environments? If I understand correctly sharing the entire configuration requires identical paths (or at least appropriate symlinks) and will result in a fully identical behaviour. What if I share in boot system1 path A, B & C and want to share in system2 only A & B? Is there a way to accomplish that?

8

No. Though you can share the key files to get the same device id, yet have separate configs and databases.

9

Dick, did you ever find a reasonable solution to this issue? Thanks.

10

what seems to be the problem with this approach. I don’t think it is generally recommended, but it used to work for me.

11

@jesseschalken,

Think of it this way:

Set this up just like two separate peer nodes like any other two peer nodes - except they just happen to never appear on the network at the same time.

This would work if just the NTFS share directory is common. The syncthing config files would be different, which is as-expected because the two OSes boot from separate locations (partitions) and keep their config files on their own separate partitions.

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