Finally, a truly private sync service!

[Sean.Havins]

I have been waiting for a sync service that I trust that does not rely on external servers out of my control. I think I now have the solution, thanks to the known hosts setting of my synced folders.

Environment:

Two MacBooks used in and out of the house.

One Mac mini server in the house.

One AirPort Extreme router firewall.

DDNS service pointing to the server host name.

Setup:

On the server;

Installed the client,

Configured a sync folder with no peer discovery boxes checked and no known hosts defined.

On the firewall;

Configured port forwarding to the UDP port and IP of BTSync on the server (not TCP),

On the MacBooks;

Installed the client,

Configured a sync folder with no peer discovery boxes checked and one known host defined pointing to the server's full host name and port,

Used the secret generated by the server client.

Result:

Any file or folder dropped into the BTSync folder on one of the MacBooks is synced to the other MacBook via the server at home. This happens whether at home or traveling.

While I haven't captured packets to prove it yet, I think that no broadcasts are being sent to the LAN I am on advertising the service. Also, I am not reliant on someone else's server being up for the sync to function.

Now to see if I can move shared password databases to it...

[Sean.Havins]

While at work, on a well fire-walled network, I captured packets while starting BTSync and syncing a new file. I was surprised to find conversations with 30 nodes on my network. Turns out I had left the "Use NAT UPnP port mapping" option activated and many of the printers within my broadcast boundary had responded to the UPnP service broadcast that BTSync sent out.

Disabled that option and tried again.

Aside from a few packets to the local router seeking NAT port mapping, the ONLY traffic is to my home server.

YAY!

So now our laptops can sync files no matter where they roam and do so without the need of static IP or DDNS pointers to the laptop. I also do not need to rely on any one else's server.

As a side note, I configured 1Password to use the BTSync folder for its database on both Macs, then opened the same record on both at the same time. Edits to the record flowed seamlessly to the other Mac. I disabled this for now because under this configuration there is no way to sync 1Password to our IOS devices. Yet.

[aneumann]

great description. This is exactly what I set up as well for syncing personal data between laptops and my home server.

[jochen]

I have the same setup, but that does not work for me. My server has a direct connection to internet, no firewall between. I configured it to port 22222 and unchecked relay,tracker,dht and all those things.

My pc sits behind a nat router with dynamic ip. I did the same configuration, but with my server:22222 as predefined host. My pc does not connect to my server, until I check the tracker on both sides.

What's wrong with my setup?

[Sean.Havins]

I have the same setup, but that does not work for me. My server has a direct connection to internet, no firewall between. I configured it to port 22222 and unchecked relay,tracker,dht and all those things.

My pc sits behind a nat router with dynamic ip. I did the same configuration, but with my server:22222 as predefined host. My pc does not connect to my server, until I check the tracker on both sides.

What's wrong with my setup?

Lets start with the basics and work our way up from there.

On the PC, did you define the server as server:22222 or server.domain.name:22222?

Have you tried to define the server by its IP address?

Can you ping the server using its fully qualified domain name?

What kind of sever is it?

Does the server have an internal firewall? If so, have you opened port 22222?

During the test, are you sure that the software is running on both the server and the PC?

You can test connectivity from your PC to any server to a any port using the telnet client. If the above hasn't helped, I can show you how to use telnet to see if port 22222 is open from the server to the PC.

Lastly and most importantly, when your connectivity issue is resolved. We MUST have a conversation about the requirement of a firewall.

DO NOT put any data that you care about on that server until you have a firewall in place.