Hi everyone,
I use Syncthing a lot for a bunch of things and it works really well for me.
But there’s one little thing I’d expect to be able to do with Syncthing but I can’t figure out how.
I’m syncing the DCIM folder on my phone to my PC to have all my photos quickly accessible on it and to have some kind of backup (I know syncthing is not a real backup solution). The problem I am facing now is the fact that my phone is running out of space. To get some more space I’d like to delete most photos and videos from my phone, but keep them on my PC. I could of course just stop syncing the folders, but I still want new photos to be automatically uploaded to my PC.
Is there some option to let Syncthing only synchronize new files in a shared folder and let it ignore everything else? Or do I need to use some other tool for this purpose?
There is an advanced per-folder option “ignore delete” that will cause the device to ignore all deletes advertised by other devices. This however has some drawbacks, e.g the folder will look permanently out of sync - because they are in fact out of sync.
Please don’t immediately recommend ignore delete. This is an advanced setting for a reason, it has drawbacks. In many cases use-cases can be served in much better ways.
E.g. to sync photos taken on a mobile, I personally sync(ed) both the camera folder and a “phone-library” dir, all standard send-receive. Thus every now and then I went through the camera dir on the pc to remove photos I don’t want any longer and “archive”/order photos I want to keep: All of them go into long-term storage and those I want to have on the phone also into the “phone-library” dir. Thus I can do everything on the pc and have just the photos I want on the mobile.
As this topic is still open and is making a close reference to how I want to use syncthing I figured to post here rather then create a new post.
I have used syncthing for a few months and I am not sure what has changed in the code base but I wanted to know is this is normal operation.
I have 3 syncs setup and they are all one way
SyncThing 1.3.4 (my Friends NAS) to SyncThing 1.4.2 (myNAS)
SyncThing 1.4.2 (Note9) to SyncThing 1.4.2 (myNAS)
SyncThing 1.4.2 (S9) to SyncThing 1.4.2 (myNAS)
I recently updated from 1.4.0 to 1.4.2 and noticed a change in how the ignoreDelet functions.
The last two folders on myNAS are setup to be receive only (with ignoreDelete option checked). My friends NAS, Note9 and S9 are set to send only.
While myNAS was on 1.4.0 and syncthing to my friends NAS on 1.3.4 via one-way with ignoreDelete on my receive only folder enabled when ever he deleted something it would show the file global size and file count discrepancy but on my size it would show a Up-to-Date.
Update 1.4.2 came along and I updated it. I unchecked the ignoreDelete option on folder1 to completely sync with my friends NAS. I added my phones and created one-way syncing.
My only concern is the ignoreDelete option in 1.4.2. When myNAS was on 1.4.0 and syncing to my friend NAS with 1.3.4 (send only); my receive only folder would report up-to-date even though there was a size discrepancy between local and global on myNAS.
Currently the folder is listed as Out-of-Sync as I have just deleted a photo on my Note9.
Is this normal and will my phone continually sync to myNAS or since it is out of sync all syncing has stopped?
I have attached a screenshot of my web interface. I just want to know if this will be the new normal. When I was running on version 1.4.0 and my friends NAS was on 1.3.4 (folder 2) with my ignore delete checked my receive only folder still showed up to date even when he deleted something. I have now configured folder 2 to not have ignore delete checked as well needed to clean out the folders and completely re-sync.
I added the SCV40 and SCV38 after upgrading to 1.4.2 and have ignore delete checked on both of my receive only folders. I have deleted a few photos on my phone and thus it says out of sync now. I thought that although the folders are unidirectional that the backed file database is bi-directional to know what file was added and or deleted.
I did take a test photo on my phone and saw it sync. So I am glad that it is still syncing.
I am not really sure what your question is, but syncthing is bi-directional. Ignore deletes is an advanced option that is not encouraged to use, and leads to the folders looking like they are out of sync, so I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here.
