How To Connect Sync With My Android Phone?


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Hi all,

 

I would like to replace Dropbox with BTSync - in order to do so I set up a linux server with ecryptfs and I have added a share via the webinterface. I then attempted to add the key into the BTSync app on my phone - wich went fine as well. However, when I select backup folders, they are seen (I think) as new, separate folders with a new secret key that I can copy and share to other folders.

 

This is not what I want - I want to automatically sync all images/videos (similar to how dropbox had the automatic upload to dropbox feature) to a specific folder in the share I created for it on my server. 

 

So basically - in the Android BTSync App - the folder that is currently under "Backup" should instead be a folder inside the folder (the share) in "My Sync".

 

How do I link the camera folders to this share? Instead of having BTSync treat it as a new folder with a new secret?

 

Thanks in advance,

Edited by 4195c50c-11b8
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4195c50c-11b8,

 

Go to backup in BitTorrent Sync on Android, tap "add folder", choose the folder where camera stores photos (usually its DCIM), share the secret with PC and have the photos uploaded. 

If you want to backup another folder, jus add it to backup page and share the secret to it with your PC. YEs, the secret from another folder folder will be different from that of previously added folder.

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Hi Helen,

 

Thanks for your response.

 

Is there no way to do this the other way around? I want the backup folder to use a pre-existing secret. This is because the "PC" is actually a Linux server - and its only purpose is to be the "always-online" system. No changes are made from that location, it only has to save stuff so that if the phone decides to die, I still have a backup on that server. 

 

I found a somewhat workaround by adding the camera folder directly under "My sync" and using the pre-supplied secret (from the server) - however this places all the camera files in the root folder, while I want them in a subfolder.

 

Thanks again,

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4195c50c-11b8,

 

Oh yeah, sure, you may always add the folder with camera photos as a regular sync folder to connect it to an already existing folder on your Linux. However mind those read-only/full-access secrets. If you connect Android to Linux with a RO secret, Android will not upload photos. If you connect it with FA secret, be careful deleting /editing of them on either side, since these changes will be propagated. 

 

 

 however this places all the camera files in the root folder, while I want them in a subfolder.

 

not sure I understand this 100%.

The files and subfolders within the sync folder are mirrored, i.e.: 

On android you have DCIM/2014/photoname.jpg and you add DCIM to BitTorrent Sync, connect it to a "Photos" folder on Linux. So on Linux inside "Photos" folder you will have "2014" subfolder with "photoname.jpg" in it. 

Similarly, if you have DCIM/photoname2.jpg on Android you will have Photos/photoname2.jpg (in the root) on Linux. 

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The files on the Linux side will never be touched, as they will purely be stored there for backup purposes. No actual users are on that linux system- besides me for administration purposes. I'll try to clarify it with an example.

 

Say on the Linux server - I create a shared folder. I want this to be the main (and only) share. So this will be located at i.e. /home/myusername/share_phone/ - so this is the folder I via BTSync.

 

Now - I get a secret code. I want to use this code on my Android phone to sync DCIM/* (files/folders) to /home/myusername/share_phone/DCIM/* (files/folders)

 

So the above is the desired result. What happens instead is that the DCIM/* (files/folders) is added to /home/myusername/share_phone/* < so directly within this folder, without having the DCIM folder as a subdirectory here.

 

Now I realize that I can theoretically create a new folder (on the Linux side) called DCIM - and add this via BTSync and generate a new key for this - but for me that is not ideal. The reason is that I would like to allow non-technical people to use this. That means there may only be a single share, and all they want to do is place their files there as a backup - as a drop-in replacement for dropbox. That means that - with the current implementation, the photos from the DCIM folder would be mixed in with all the other documents, instead of just having them stored away in a subfolder. Creating new folders and importing new secret keys for a new folder is simply too complicated for the people I would like to supply this for. 

 

So this comes down to the (feature request?) to allow for sync locations (DCIM/*) to be mapped to a separate folder within the share (/home/myusername/share_phone/any/given/folder/here/* < contents of DCIM/* being shared to this place) - while the main share starts at /home/myusername/share_phone/)

 

I hope my intent is made more clear through this explanation. English is not my native language, so I apologize for the potential language barriers in explaining the issue that I am having.

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4195c50c-11b8,

 

yes, thank you! now it's much clearer and I see that I got it right at first. Yes, in this case Android DCIM will be paired with Linux share_phone, so it'll be DCIM/*** <-> share_phone/*** setup. 

 

At present only one such pair is allowed by application. We have similar feature requests allowing to store multiple folders from different devices in one folder on local device. We will consider them for future releases. Thank you! 

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