I use “Send Only” to upload backups from multiple Android devices to a desktop PC, where the same folders are configured as “Receive Only”. This is just to be extra sure that no changes are made to the files externally.
At the moment, I also have one folder set to “Receive Only”, where I am syncing 300 GB of data from the other side of the globe. The upload speed on the other side is only 25 KB/s, so the sync process is likely going to take a few months, and I find Syncthing the most convenient to send such a large amount of data. Once completed, the remote folder is to be removed completely, so I am not interested in pushing any local changes to it.
Where I use Syncthing to stage data to a remote computer to then backup, I use Send Only/Receive Only. I also distribute programs to clients using the same.
I want to have media (photo library) content “safe” at the NAS from client (Win PC) side changes. Many apps want to write to content files without asking permission. Therefore clients should be “Receive only” and the NAS/server “send only”.
I use this mode for selected orders to be sure that the content of the “send-only folder” absolutely matches the connected peers and that everything else in the recipient folder is deleted.
As an example, I take Wordpress, whose installation and content are transferred from a production system to a backup system. This helped me a lot because my productive system had broken down, so I just had to switch and the contents of Wordpress were accessible again in a very short time and were up to date.
Another nod here for photo/family stuff backup. Receive only with file versioning on ZFS. In several places. A syncs to receive only B and C but B and C don’t sync to each other in case of corruption or deletion or a nasty getting in etc.
Backups of A, B and C are also made. Think of them as redundancy boxes like a ZFS arrays redundant disks.
It’s highly unlikely that all 3 locations will burn down and the bank vaults with the backups too. Bar nuclear war, I’m almost as sure as I can be that I’m not losing the photos of my kids growing up.
My setup is similar to many of the others described here. I have folders on my mobile device set to Send-only if I want them backed up to my PCs or anywhere else. On the PC end, I don’t use Receive-only, but I do enable one of the “trash can” options, so when I delete the file on my phone, I can just pull it out of the trash.
Mine is also similar. I have Syncthing on my Android phone and macOS laptop.
/DCIM is Send Only on Android, Receive Only + Ignore Deletes + Simple Versioning (with 9999999999 versions) on macOS.
/ has the same setup with the exception of ignoring /DCIM, /Android and /Syncthing.
/Syncthing contains my all other Syncthing folders. /Syncthing/Mobile Sync is Send and Receive for whenever I need two way synching, and /Syncthing/Mobile Backup is Send Only for applications that take regular backups to a file (because it’s nice to have all app backups in a single place).
I semi-manually move things from my laptop to external hard drives before deleting them from my phone.
I use Receive Only when adding devices to a share that uses a synced ignore file.
That way the thumbnails etc aren’t introduced to the global state before the ignore file is downloaded.
Once the global ignore file is on the new device I switch to S/R.
How did you implement this? In my case I want to share a folder between my laptops and my server. The laptops should accept changes from each other but not from the server, is this doable at the time of writing?
Hi, I want to set up something really similar to your first example, I was thinking of using the ignoredelete option but your setup example seems more reasonable
However this is my first time trying to do something like this and would love some help
My question is what is this “Cron job” that is used to move files in the server, if you can instruct me on how to set it up or guide me to where I can find a tutorial or information on how to set it up, I’ll be really thankful
Thanks in advance and sorry if the English isn’t that good
This would heavily depend on your particular usecase, but the general idea is to have a command that would move your photo/video files from the mobile-synced directory to the “permanent” directory, and then have that command run on schedule.
The command can be as simple as mv photos_from_mobile/* photos/, or more complicated (I wrote a script to have it organized by year and month, for example). One thing to keep in mind here is that you don’t want to move the files that are not (yet) fully synchronized, so whatever your command ends up being, make sure it doesn’t move .syncthing.* files.
As for running the command on schedule, there are multiple ways of doing that, depending on the operating system you’re using and your personal preferences. For Linux, the traditional way is setting up a Cron job, but newer and more versatile options are available. How often to have the command run is, of course, up to you.
Don’t be shy about your English, it’s not my native language, either.
I use “Send only” to backup my phone’s KeePassDX DBs (2FA) to some other ppl smartphones (in not trusted mode) with simple versioning ON. That’s mutual help to establish non-cloud “external” backups that requires no PCs/nothing.
I also plan to try “Send only” to share Calendars to read-only users.
