Syncthing & restoring clones to new machines

Got a quick question about the following scenario:

  1. Mac 1 and Mac 2 are synced with Syncthing.
  2. Mac 2 is taken in for repair, and in the meantime a temporary replacement machine (Mac 3) is set up from a backup of Mac 2
  3. Mac 3 now picks up where Mac 2 left off, and syncs with Mac 1 for a while.
  4. When Mac 2 comes back from repair, it is restored from the same backup used in step 2.

At this point, Mac 2 is out of sync with Mac 1, because it’s been restored from a backup that’s now a bit old. So what happens to the changes / new files that exist on Mac 1?

Does Mac 1 sync its changes to Mac 2 (the behaviour I’m hoping for), or does Mac 2 essentially “wind back” Mac 1?

Bad or unexpected things might happen. Don’t do this, use a new device ID for mac3 and avoid the issue, or generate a new one for mac2 after the fact if you want to do the initial replacement quickly.

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Thanks for that. So basically just start fresh on Mac 3 as a new Syncthing device, and on Mac 1 share all the relevant folders with Mac 3?

All the relevant folders & data will already be on Mac 3 (since it was setup from the clone of Mac 2) so things should sync right up from the get-go in theory.

Pretty much, yes.

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Gotcha, thanks very much!

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