[Now Implemented!] Btsync As A Windows Service


upcboy

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  • 2 weeks later...

Lots of interest, but apparently too difficult (only reason I can think of).

There is indeed lots of interest, and believe me the developers are fully aware of this!

It's not that its "too difficult" to implement, but more likely to be the case that this feature is something that's being held back for the Business/Enterprise edition of Sync.

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Why that feature only for the Business/Enterprise edition? If that is the case, why not just say so.

I'm not saying it categorically is! ...I was simply giving you a possible alternative explanation as to why this hasn't yet been implemented other than your sole "it's too difficult to implement" theory! :P

 

That way many of us would not be wasting our time...

Suggestions made in this forum are certainly NOT a waste of time! They are ALL seen and ALL considered by the devs. However, some of the suggestions that have been made will likely not make it into the current free offering of Sync and will instead be earmarked for potential future inclusion in the Business/Enterprise Edition of Sync instead.

 

I have no further details I can share with you at this time as to what those features might be, but I can assure you that posting in the Feature Request forum is not a "waste of time"

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I have developed a Windows Service by myself, which checks if btsync executable is running (in API mode), and starts it in case it isn't.

 

I've done that in under an hour, and I'm a beginner C/C++ programmer.

 

Just saying...

 

Btw, I'm going to share the code soon, if anyone's interested :)

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Having BT Sync run as a Windows service wouldn't just be an enterprise-only need.  There are plenty of home users who would love to have this.  I run a Linux box at home as a media center/NAS and I have BT Sync installed.  It is running as a service on that machine and I access it using the web.  That is strictly for me personally as it keeps all my personal computers synced.  My wife also has her laptop synced to a folder so there is no data loss.  If I was a Windows only person, I wouldn't be able to do this without staying logged into a server all the time.

 

At work we are all Windows shop and the thought of bringing a Linux server in sends chills up spines.  I was honestly shocked when I realized the Windows client was only a client and not a service.  I have to login to our server running BT Sync every time the server reboots and disconnect my session to keep my developer's data synced.

 

Saving this feature for an enterprise only product will make several people switch to another product.  Sure, some small businesses might continue to use the free product if the feature was there.  That's just a fact of life, but I don't see it as a good enough reason to make the bulk of your users unhappy with your product.  Up until this latest version, the product was really good and had the bugs sorted out, and users were happy.  The current product has gotten a lot of users upset, and this on top of a Windows service possibly being an enterprise-only option would be enough to turn these users to something else.

 

Please don't let money keep useful features out of this product.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I posted this in the main release thread for 1.4.103, but it's not really getting traction there.

 

As part of the release note for .103 comes the line

"- Added "/webui" command line parameter to run WebUI on Windows in default browser."

 

The obstacle that we were previously experiencing when wrapping the btsync program into a service (on Windows) was the lack of interaction to that service (since the standard Windows GUI was not available for the wrapped program).  The previous solution was to kill the background service, run the program from the gui, make the changes, shutdown the program, then manually restart the service.  This was obviously not a realistic use case.

 

If we now have an options to run btsync with a WebGUI as default, it seems that we could add the switch to the program call, then wrap the program, and interact with btsync on Windows (via the WebGUI) without having to have an active user session running.

 

I haven't tried this personally yet, but it seems that we may have a realistic use case here, unless I'm forgetting some dependency.  Can someone confirm that this works?

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+1

 

I noticed, installing bittorrent sync on a computer with Windows 7, but without windows updates, Bittorrent sync runs best using IE. Anyways, it launched in a Google Chrome browser using the loopback address.

 

This is an indication to me that its very close to being implemented via web browser based access, as it seems to for the most part already be ready to go if loopback based UI over http/s is already implemented.. I really hope that only a few changes are needed to get this far!

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