synching servers

March 21, 2006 6:38 PM

How can I get my home server to synch with the server in my office?

I work at home 50% of the time, and I would like easy access to my work files. What I would like to do is set up two identical servers, one at home and one in my office, and I would like them to incrementally synch any changes every couple of hours. I would always be able to quickly access my files, and since the drives are essentially mirrors, I would always have a backup. Is there an easy way to do this?

posted by alball to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Do you want a two-way sync or one-way? Two way is probably fairly difficult, one-way not so much.

Current I use rsync running over ssh, the work machine connects to my home machine with a private ssh key, via an account that is limited to only kicking off the rsync daemon.

A few links that I used for reference:

http://www.jdmz.net/ssh/
http://killyridols.net/rsyncssh.shtml

Here's a rsync for windows howto, not something I've tried.

http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/help/rsync/rsync_pc1.html
posted by beowulf573 at 6:43 PM on March 21, 2006

I would want two way.
posted by alball at 6:48 PM on March 21, 2006

What do you want to happen if the same file is changed on both machines between syncs?
posted by nicwolff at 7:14 PM on March 21, 2006

What platform/OS?

This is incredibly easy to do in Mac OS X.
posted by unSane at 7:15 PM on March 21, 2006

nicwolff: I dunno, I guess it would be nice if it would ask me what to do. like windows asks during offline file sharing synchs.

unsane: All my machines are win xp
posted by alball at 7:21 PM on March 21, 2006

You might want to take a look at Unison.
posted by mr_roboto at 7:22 PM on March 21, 2006

FolderShare.
It's pretty lightweight (8M resident, ~0% CPU when not syncing), easy and it just works, even though Microsoft bought it a few months back.

It just sits there in the background, monitoring the designated folders on each computer, and if there is a change to a file, it starts syncing it immediately once it's closed. Offline changes get synched automatically when the machine is reconnected to the network. It can also be used to share files among multiple users.

It can manage conflicts when a given file is changed in two locations at the same time, though it's better if you avoid those sorts of situations.

I've been keeping an eye on Novell's open source version of iFolder too, but setting it up looks like work.
posted by Good Brain at 7:52 PM on March 21, 2006