Sync Messed Up My Directory - What Did I Do Wrong?


rookey

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Hello,

 

I installed BtSync, set up directory synchronization for my /DATA directories on both my notebook and the desktop PC and immediately stopped BTSync after that to define the directories to be excluded in the .SyncIgnore file.

 

The way I did it is to simply list the subdirectories I didn't want to sync, so it now looks like:

.DS_Store.DS_Store?._*.Spotlight-V100.Trashesehthumbs.dbdesktop.iniThumbs.dbAndroidStudioProjectsAStudio-GradlesbakBluetoothDropboxeBooksEigene BilderEvernoteGoogle Desktop Datamoz-profilesMy PSP FilesPicasa EditsPicasaLib

After updating these files on both computers, I started BTSync again.

 

However, it started to sync files contained in the PicasaLib directory! (it also created a backup copy of these files  in the .SyncArchive directory). :huh: Can it be that it 'remembered' the previous setting and didn't re-read the .SyncIgnore file again after the restart and refresh the list of files to be copied? If so, how can I force it to do so?

 

What was even worse however, and I also don't have any explanation for: it did overwrite a newer version of a file on the desktop computer (a Truecrypt image file) - how can that happen?! Isn't the software supposed to copy only newer files? :wacko::blink: Luckily really, the backup copy was created, so at least my work of 2 weeks hadn't been lost. :o

 

BTSync looks like exactly the tools I'm looking for, but I really have to  trust it.

 

thanks, r.

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@rookey,

 

Please note, that BTSync is in beta now, so some of unexpected issues are still happening, though the team is working hard to make BTSync very stable and reliable.

 

Now regarding your issues

.SyncIgnore issue

 try adding directories in 

\<directoryname>

format, i.e. add leading slash or backslash depending on your OS.

 

Old TrueCrypt volume overwrite issue

It is a known interoperability issue with a TrueCrypt. When BTSync adds new files, it calculates their hash and remembers mtime and size of a file. However, hash calculation is a very costly operation from both CPU and HDD usage POV, so BTSync can't calculate hashes without solid reason. The trigger to believe that file has changed for BTSync is change of file's mtime or file size.

And, TrueCrypt is a security application which wants user to be secure: when you change anything on TC volume, it is NOT changing the mtime of volume file size intentionally. In this case BTSync has no chances to find out that the data has changed or which version of TC volume is the latest.

 

Solution here would be to set an option in TrueCrypt to force it updating the mtime.

 

Hope it will help to bring your trust back to BTSync :)

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Thanks for your reply Roman, quite helpful!

 

I found out the following that may also be helpful for others:

 

  • under Windows, subdirectories of the Sync directory that should be excluded from synchronization should be defined as \subdir\*
  • even under Windows, defined directories are case-sensitive! So "Subdir" <> "subdir" !!
  • of course, BTSync has to be closed if one makes changes to the .SyncIgnore file that should be identical on both synced devices.

 

For my special needs regarding a TrueCrypt volume, I was thinking that the volume file had identical file dates, but maybe the 'last access' dates in the NTFS filesystem were different or whatever.  Since I open my volumes via commmand line, I had to dig through the docs to find out how to have TrueCrypt update the timestamp if the volume is changed. The parameter for that is "/mountoption timestamp" or shorter, "/mo ts".

 

thanks for a great - and free - piece of software!

rookey

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