1.4 And Beyond -- How To Generate Encrypted Read Only Secret?

[el_milagro]

@el_milagro

There is no way to add Encrypted folder via UI in 2.0 explicitly. You have either force Sync to generate a regular key for you by adding a classic folder (hold shift, then click the "Add folder") - then you can replace "A" with "D".

OR - generate it on your own. I can slightly improve your instruction on generating own keys - you need to generate 20 bytes of random data, Base32 encode them (yeah, the strange encoding containing A..Z and 2..7 is Base32) and prepend with "D" to get the secret.

 

Ah, the "hold shift, then click 'Add folder'" is really all I was looking for. I'm not actually paranoid enough to go around generating my own keys just for the hell of it -- at least not yet.

For any setup you need to backup the actual folder you were syncing and the "storage" folder which keeps the DB. On Win that would be %appdata%\BitTorrent Sync, for Linux - it depends on package you use and your setup. By default Sync creates the .sync subfolder next to binary and saves DB there.

 

While I'm in this thread though ... exactly what is needed from the "storage" folder? just the .DB file? a .journal? a .db-wal?

 

Here is my use case:

 

I have a large folder on my desktop that I want to back up to my brother, but I don't want him to have access to the contents (therefore I would only give him encrypted read only key). However, the folder is VERY large, but the contents do not change often. Therefore my hope is to "seed" the backup onto an external hard drive I can hand to him instead of doing it over the internet. I'm doing this right now using my laptop that only has an ERO key ... on 1.4 this step never finished (I might have even spoken to you about it, zendesk ticket #18322). I was out of town until now and am just now trying it again with 2.0. So far my first, smaller test with about 1/6 of the data that also consistently failed previously has now worked, so now I am trying the full folder.

 

Now, however, I guess I need to know what files from the %AppData%\BitTorrent Sync folder I need to deliver to my brother as well? If it's just the .db  and .db-wal files that will be easy to tell which to give him, as the .db file is noticeably larger than any of my other ones. Are there any other files, though? Do I need to figure out a .journal to give him? Anything else in here?

 

Thanks.

 

Edit: it's since become obvious which .journal file belongs to this folder as all the zips have started popping up. so do I need to copy the .journal and all the .journal.zips as well?

[Guest proactiveservices]

To pre-seed an ERO share you'll need to have another Sync instance on your LAN (another device/virtual machine) which is given the ERO key. Use the portable drive as its shared folder. Once it's synced, shut down the second Sync, eject the drive and the it's ready to go to your brother. I did the same with my brother ;-)

[el_milagro]

To pre-seed an ERO share you'll need to have another Sync instance on your LAN (another device/virtual machine) which is given the ERO key. Use the portable drive as its shared folder. Once it's synced, shut down the second Sync, eject the drive and the it's ready to go to your brother. I did the same with my brother ;-)

 

That was my plan, but @RomanZ made it sound like I would need some additional db files from %appdata% ...

[RomanZ]

@el_milagro

I beg you pardon, seems I confused 2 scenarios. @proactiveservices is right - you need only files to pre-seed ERO peer.

 

The scenario I was thinking about is restoring your data from ERO peer only (imagine that all other peers are dead or do not have data). In this case, you'll need files on ERO peer AND storage folder content AND RW key.

[Parzival]

Will 2.0 be getting ERO functionality? It seems like a step back. I upgraded a few of my nodes to 2.0, but it's been such a miserable experience that I'm going to roll back to 1.4.

 

To be clear, ERO sync is the only reason I'm using BitTorrent Sync instead of something else.