Using BT SYnc for entire OSX "Users" folder?


alans17

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Has anyone attempted this? I have multiple Macs for which I would like to establish roaming profiles without implementing OSX Server. This is what I'm thinking...

 

1.) Create the same accounts across all Macs. This would create the various users inside the Users folder.

2.) Create an "Administrator" account on each mac that would auto-launch at startup and run BT Sync.

3.) Sync the entire Users folder with the rest of the Macs.

 

I'm reasonably sure that this would get all the files where they need to go without any major headaches. I'm just wondering if it's going to cause permissions issues.

 

The other alternative would be to configure individual syncs for each user that would auto-launch whenever taht user logs in. It's not that hard to implement, but would mean more syncs to maintain.

 

Either way, I plan on also maintaining a 24/7 file server that will also participate in all of these syncs so that a sync will always occur even if only one Mac is on.

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Permissions will get garbled up. The reason is simple: On Mac1 BTsync runs as Administrator and has - based on its privileges - access to all user files. That's good because that is what you want. It does not however care about ownership, maybe some access rights like writeable and executable. On Mac2 BTsync runs as Administrator as well, waiting to receive the files and saves them under its own username and therefore effectively kill the ownership settings. BTsync is multiplatform, so the whole bunch of Unix/Linux clients would not bode well if they cared about ownerships when paired with Windows clients.

 

What you could do instead is syncing shares on the user level, which would allow User on Mac1 to sync to User on Mac2. Although I think some extended attributes won't make the sync either and could break some other stuff. Maybe some other sync solution would be more suitable for your use case scenario e.g. rsync.

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Well, if everything else would be the same on the systems you are syncing, it might work. I would probably start with a fresh install, setup both systems exactly the same and then create a share. I still have my doubts that it would work, but am happy to be proven wrong  :)

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Well, if everything else would be the same on the systems you are syncing, it might work. I would probably start with a fresh install, setup both systems exactly the same and then create a share. I still have my doubts that it would work, but am happy to be proven wrong  :)

That's actually pretty easy to do. There's more than one way to skin that cat.

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