Syncthing, inside a syncthing? (Synception)

Hey, yet another user migrating from btsync to this open source alternative. I have been considering it for a while and the latest 2.0 update of btsync is what was the tipping point for me to just do it. So far I haven’t done much but I actually prefer the way Syncthing works (requiring authorisation at both sides, only needing one key for the machine you want to sync with rather than every folder)

My main query now is if syncthing is capable of doing something that btsync was not which is having a sync folder inside another sync folder.

Some example of use-cases for this include:

  1. Syncing only a sub-folder to a mobile device. So I have some pretty big folders that I want on my desktops (things like video editing projects and whatnot) but I also want to be able to access some of those files on a
  2. Shared project inside a work folder. I would want my work folder to be on all my machines, but then the problem I had with BTSync was, if I wanted to have a group synced folder as a well organised subdirectory it was not possible.
  3. Backup larger directories while sharing smaller subsections So I can see how this can be used for a great way to backup my remote devices: laptops, mobile, tablets, etc. It would be great to have a Master folder that can keep my whole /home folder backed up onto a server or the whole android sdcard folder backed up to my desktops with just my photos and media syncing to my other devices.

Hope this is already possible. I would test this out and just see what happens but just getting started and I don’t want to start fiddling with experimental things then end up causing corruption of my precious files. If this isn’t possible then this is my feature request. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

You can put subfolders of a synced folder as extra synced folder. As long as the folder inside folder is only on one device you should never get a problem otherwise there can maybe be confilcts when syncthing wants to pull the same file twice because it does not know it’s the same (I did not test it but I can imagine that something like this could happen).

For point 1 you could also use .stignore

Thanks for the response.

I could probably use the .stignore to avoid any problems by ignoring shared sub-folders (for point 2) and I can’t see any problem with point 3 as that would be a one to one situation with the one which would have the subfolders defined being the master so no possible conflicts should happen.

In the .stignore can you do (as you would in a .gitignore) :

*
!/foldertoinclude/

Please see:

Thanks!