The Types of Things People are Using SYNC for

[conwayboys]

As a relative novice but with good end user skills I think this Bit Torrent Sync is fantastic and i was wondering what others are using it for.

I personally have only been using it for about 2 weeks, seems to work fine and I use it for two principle purposes.

1. I have added my Endnote Referencing Library to my sync file and it syncs perfectly across my work and home computers (both Macs)

2. Having gone back to university at age 50 I not find myself with one son doing undergraduate commerce and myself completing a masters so we have a folder of "goodies" study stuff that we share seamlessly as he is no longer living at home. Works like a charm.

Would anyone else care to comment on how this wonderful program has enhanced their lives.

[rdebath]

For me it's still in the testing stage, but the use I have in mind is to fix the Windows shared documents directory at work.

Basically, we currently have a mapped drive (S:) from a central file server so the users have to remember to save their files there. But modern laptop machines have huge hard drives in them, larger than the (S:) partition on the file server so there's absolutely no reason not to have a full copy of the S: drive on their local machine (The laptops have FDE) except the, huge, problem of keeping them in sync ...

The signs are good.

[conwayboys]

Wow cracker idea same issues at my work might have to discuss with my CIO.

[Automatic Coding]

I'm also still testing it, and, probably won't use it actively until a few more items are added (Versioning).

So, currently I just have one share between a offsite PC and an onsite PC (Depending on the way you look at it, it may also be a 2*offsite if I'm not on either site, the files themselves are just items like linux distro isos, invoices from purchases, etc...), however, once versioning is added and I trust it more, I'll probably use it to replace CrashPlan, since, CrashPlan is so heavy and ugly and requires me to use an SSH tunnel to even check the GUI/etc.

[conwayboys]

Great ideas!!

[gunverth]

- Distribution and auto update of templates and other static documents, e.g. MS Word templates.

- Technical client documentation in free form for consultants.

I have a law firm client that uses legal templates. The language used in them are determined in court and users are not allowed to change anything more than the case itself. Otherwise the defendants can use that if the language is "home made". These documents and templates resides on read-only share on a file server and only an editor is allowed to make changes. This works great except when out of office. Working directly over VPN is not fun at all. Better to have an updated local storage.

For the same reason among my fellow consultants: we can use BtSync to distribute all technical documentation about clients in free form, i.e. PDF, Excel, image files, what have you. You never work and edit documentation of a certain client at the same time as a colleague anyway. If I edit or add a file, my colleagues get that update near instantely. No need for hard-to-use certificates on a hard-to-use web site for the information. Just encrypt your local hard drive (FileVault in our case) or use an encrypted image file.

[Camaban]

Attempting to replace Dropbox entirely.

Between this, owncloud, a backup-only Linux VPS that's charging $7 a month and the owncloud app, I'm getting roughly 5x the storage DB provides for about 30% less.

It works well.

Do wish I'd had this at my last workplace. It would have saved so, so many hours when transferring large updates to a couple of remote networks.

[b0nifaci0]

Mine is one-way backup solution from a couple of windows pc to a central file server running linux. Quite happy with it.

[Automatic Coding]

Attempting to replace Dropbox entirely.

Between this, owncloud, a backup-only Linux VPS that's charging $7 a month and the owncloud app, I'm getting roughly 5x the storage DB provides for about 30% less.

It works well.

Do wish I'd had this at my last workplace. It would have saved so, so many hours when transferring large updates to a couple of remote networks.

This too, although, I paid ~ $1,300*2 (two servers, two different geographical locations) for ~ 15TB/location for life (And expandable for ~ $50/TB at current prices). So, technically (Excluding power, which, I'm not too sure what I pay for the server on its own) I paid $1,300 for 15TB for life, rather than $1/GB/Year.

Although, getting 15TB off dropbox for a single year would be 15*1024*$1=$15,360, so, even in a single year I'm pulling way above even on dropbox prices (Although, I'm sure they'd give me some kind of discount if I bought 15TB).

[MRACHINI]

This too, although, I paid ~ $1,300*2 (two servers, two different geographical locations) for ~ 15TB/location for life (And expandable for ~ $50/TB at current prices). So, technically (Excluding power, which, I'm not too sure what I pay for the server on its own) I paid $1,300 for 15TB for life, rather than $1/GB/Year.

Although, getting 15TB off dropbox for a single year would be 15*1024*$1=$15,360, so, even in a single year I'm pulling way above even on dropbox prices (Although, I'm sure they'd give me some kind of discount if I bought 15TB).

Hey

Where did you get that Storage for life?

[stallemanden]

As I'm an Danish guy living and working in Beijing, China, SyncApp(BTSync) was a lifesaver for me.

I have a NAS here in CN, and one in DK.

I've tried with different ways of setting it up, so that the documents/files I use here in CN, partly on laptop but also on my NAS, would also be available in DK, without the anoying limitations caused by The Great FW of China.

So, having set up BTSync on both my NAS devices, and on my laptops. No matter where I am - being DK og CN, I always have fast access to my files - without having to put my data in the hands of third party services.

The delay there might be between DK an CN, copying files, is no longer an issue, as things gets in sync instantly.

[Automatic Coding]

Hey

Where did you get that Storage for life?

I'm hosting my own machine, the only cost I have to pay that I wouldn't normally have to pay is the power (Assuming no hardware fails), I already have to pay for the internet in the locations so that's the same price.

[iamjohnny]

Right now I've got several devices running BT Sync (nearly flawlessly, one might add):

2 Servers (one of them won't be renewed in 3 days, then it's just 1)

1 RPi

1 Home Server (running WS2012E)

2 MacBooks, 1 iMac, I'll add the other machines in a few days

I use it to share like everything. With the server and the RPi running 24/7 I can sync files wherever I am whenever I want to. The RPi and the HomeServer are at different locations (~50km), my own Macbook travels with me, the others travel with my family/friends,...

I use several different folders, sometimes read-only, sometimes full access,...

It's the perfect tool, it just needs some features like sync-only-on-demand and maybe a Web-Interface and of course an iPhone-App.

For some reason it's quite slow...I only get download speeds of like 2MB/s right now when I should get 4.4MB/s (which is the speed of my internet connection, the servers is somewhere in the hundreds of mbps)

[yottabit]

Right now using it to back up a bunch of machines to a Linux VM that has the actual BTSync storage mounted to a FreeNAS (FreeBSD) server.

Clients are all read-only secrets and include a half dozen Windows 7 (2/3 x64 and 1/3 x86) and a couple Windows XP.

So far only have one 3-way pairing setup; all others are 1-to-1.

Oh, and using it to share some photos with the parents-in-law.

[josiahsprague]

I'm thinking about setting up an RPi with an external hard drive running BtSync and syncing about 400GB of files between a Mac and a PC. I'd possibly like to extend the number and location of RPi's in the future for more redundancy.

@yottabit, I'd be interested in knowing more details about mounting BtSync storage to a FreeNAS/FreeBSD server.

[moonboon]

For me it's an OS deployment technology. Creating bootable VHD's of full sysprep'd Windows OS's, then modifying the Windows bootloader to boot off the newly deployed VHD file the next time the system restarts. Manually having to install on each machine I want to deploy to right now since there is no truly portable/command line driven install yet for Windows.

This allows me to deploy an OS to a machine behind the scenes so students can still be working with the current OS. But in a "multicast" type fashion so as to not bog down the fileserver completely.

[yottabit]

@yottabit, I'd be interested in knowing more details about mounting BtSync storage to a FreeNAS/FreeBSD server.

Hi josiahsprague. Starting with build 128 there is now a native FreeBSD 8.x version that I have run successfully on FreeNAS 8.3.1-p2. I have successfully run build 128 and 130. There was a reported problem of build 131 crashing on FreeBSD but I haven't confirmed myself. (Build 131 isn't officially released yet.)

However, if you still want to run BTSync on Linux with a mountpoint to a NAS like I have (FreeNAS in this case), here's what I did.

1. Create a dataset on your NAS and export to CIFS. (I used CIFS instead of NFS because of the known problem on FreeNAS where NFS is always run in sync mode even when you explicitly set to async, which causes a dramatic slowdown since it works counter to the method ZFS employs with extensive caching.)
   
2. Mount the export on Linux. I did this using /etc/fstab. Note that I'm also mounting as root, and running BTSync as root. You probably shouldn't do this. You would want to adjust the permissions on the mount point to make it writeable by whichever user under which you choose to run BTSync.
   //nas1.domehq/btsync /mnt/btsync cifs credentials=/root/btsync.cred,rw,uid=root,gid=root,forceuid 0 0
   
3. Place your Linux btsync binary wherever you like, including within the mountpoint if you like. (I put mine in /root but will probably move it to the mountpoint at some point. Just remember that due to meta cache storage, you should not share the directory in which the binary runs.)
   
4. Configure BTSync.
   /path/to/btsync --dump-sample-config > /path/to/btsync.conf
   nano -w /path/to/btsync.conf
   
5. Add BTSync to your rc.local init script for auto start.
   echo 'nice -n 19 /path/to/btsync --config /path/to/btsync.conf' >> /etc/rc.local
   
6. Start BTSync from init script, or manually.
   /etc/rc.local start
   or
   nice -n 19 /path/to/btsync --config /path/to/btsync.conf
   

Note that I used 'nice -n 19' to run BTSync as lowest priority, giving up its cycles to other applications when needed. This isn't perfect though, since if you're running BTSync to a non-SSD, or to a multi-disk array that isn't served by a high quantity of disks, the indexing process will still be largely I/O bound and cause detrimental performance. However, running this indexing of a remote mount will probably keep the local Linux system responsive since its local disks won't be I/O bound.

Hope this helps!

[byrmol]

- Distribution and auto update of templates and other static documents, e.g. MS Word templates.

- Technical client documentation in free form for consultants.

We are using it like this as well plus with application update roll outs.

[ddt]

I've created a folder w/ two subdirectories, "in" and "out". In "in", you put source videos at any resolution, in "out" appears scaled and prores 422 transcoded videos ready for offline editing. On the backend is a linux box running a coffeescript in node.js that fires off a multithreaded avconv to do the heavy lifting. It checks to make sure there's no .!sync extension. Works great, and the OSX Sync client gives you a little notice when your file is ready in the "out" directory.

I almost don't want an API, so that I can resist temptation. I ilke that everything is done cleanly through directories, and I feel that it's a nice hedge against Sync going creepy someday, because if I keep it simple like that, I can imagine an open source alternative quickly appearing to take its place if it does.

[Moxon]

I use btsync to "replace" cloud drives of any kind (which I neither like nor use so far) and to get rid of the need for a server.

Specifically that means:

* Syncing my music creation folder between Linux and Windows

* Syncing my company documents between the laptop and the server (so I need no netdrives, rsync, ...)

* Syncing my photos from my mobile to the server (once btsync is available for Android)

Future plans:

* Syncing media files between player devices

* Sharing foto collections (RAW files can be huge, last vacation took 40GB alone) with friends

[jelks]

I use TrueCrypt to create an encrypted container on a USB flash drive. Within this I have various apps from portableapps.com and all my work related files, and a few personal ones I like to have with me.

BTSync keeps my flash drives (regular + backup) synced with my home desktop and my personal laptop.

[Syl]

I used it to sync a big mp3 collection.

I plan to use it in the future with git-annex or hg LargeFiles to sync repositories with big binary files (like assets in video games).

The only decent alternative to btsync was Dropbox (with LAN sync), but you need an account and some space in your dropbox. btsync removes this requirement.

[unixunderground]

I installed it on several servers around the globe I keep powered 24/7, connected to high-speed internet, as well as on a home server in each of my homes, as to get high-speed lan syncing.

It's a really neat little program, I had been using Aero FS before this, but BT Sync is way better, as Aero FS isn't really getting on as to patching many annoying bugs that have been going on for months.

In any case, BT Sync has really changed my life, as I now have a global relay network with all my files being redundant all around the planet, and thanks to the all the servers I set up, + the lan ones in each of my "home" locations, I am easily able to download newly added files from my seedbox/music server/movie server at speeds that easily reach 20 mb/s on my laptop wherever I am, within a few minutes from the time I add them in my main server I use for archiving and downloading huge files.

I also set up more read-only relay servers daily, as I find suitable "zombie" computers of family-members and friends that are IT-illeterate enough not to care/understand what's going on, and use practically no disk space on their massively over-sized hard-drives and have high-speed internet connections as well, so that they won't mind further relying my files.

[amartins]

I share my local WAMP folder, so I can continue working on projects on different machines without having to push/pull all the time. Just a local repo which stays up to date with BTSync

[gunverth]

I´m just trying out a solution with BTSync for K-12, where the teacher publishes work files locally in his MacBook and all the students get the files (pictures, templates, webarchive) on their respective computer (Macs) as read-only (no syncback). No need to publish them on the central web based system and download them to the same folder anymore.

This would be completely awesome with an iOS app/API for the same task.