Wishlist (Archive)


aurika

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I love this app and I know versioning is being worked on.

So here's my wish list.

For all secrets
-selective sync


some API? (maybe web based or app based) transfers directory tree/file list first, then allow you to selectively choose which folders files you would like sync'd

This would really make this a "Killer cloud app"

ie
at home I have all my documents, etc in a folder A shared on btsync
From a mobile device, I need access to folder X in folder A
I have the secret (or readonly secret) for folder A, but due to space/bandwidth do not want to sync the whole folder.

So I start btsync locally. In "selective copy" I indicate which folders/files I would like sync'd
Wait a bit and I have the files I want.

If you extend this model, you could potentially use this to
1) stream select media from a btsync share
2) have your own on demand cloud storage

hmm.. seems this has already been requested...oh well bump

Edited by GreatMarko
Struck-through items are suggestions which now have their own dedicated threads in the Feature Requests forum
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I am using this software since a while back and i love it! Awsome work! But: the folder-secret approach is clumsy.

Motivation/Example: Each computer has its own settings for its share. Lets say that I create a shared folder and specify that it should only sync via LAN (no tracking/relay server). If i then add it to another computer it will use the default settings for the new share. This causes tracking and relaying to be enabled on the new computer and remain disabled on the old.

Settings could be negotiated between the devices via network and i guess it should be. I guess this is a childhood bug of this marvelous little program.

But lets look at the typical workflow of setting up a share:

  1. Create a share with a secret
  2. Copy the secret
  3. Paste into a txt file
  4. Save the txt file
  5. Move the txt file to the new computer
  6. Open the txt file on new computer
  7. Copy secret
  8. Paste secret into BTsync
  9. Choose folder to sync to

So why not create a standardized file, lets call it a "Sync File", similar to the Torrent file. It could then contain information like:

  • Name for the share, so that there is a common denominator across all devices. Lets say that I share "Paris Photos" with my girlfriend who decides to put them in the folder "The Summer of '69" and my father puts them into the folder "The Bastard Son in the Town of Love" ;) A name would make it possible to backtrack via BTsync and find my Paris Photos on my girlfriends laptop.
  • Settings such as Tracker server allowed or not and which tracker server to use. This means i could set up a private tracker without relying on anyone else. I like this idea since i could control who is accessing my files. A family tracker with locked IP addresses via IPTables for instance.
  • Secret.
  • Icon could be used to set the windows folder icon and could be used internally in BTsync, so that the paris photos all have a litte Eiffeltower on their folder, across all devices.
  • It could be expanded through a version field like a vCard file.

The new workflow for creating a share would then be:

  1. Create a share with a secret
  2. Save the sync-file
  3. Move the sync-file to the new computer
  4. Open the sync-file on the new computer
  5. Choose folder to sync to

Please consider implementing this and continue being awsome!

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I think it would be nice to connect Sync to a free cloud service I already use. I'm not sure how it would work on the authentication side, or how well the bittorrent protocols would work with them, but setting up my dropbox, box.net, cubby, skydrive, googledrive, or any other cloud service as another synced device would be rather nice.

Umm... Just thinking about the "obvious" here, but why not just have ensure the directories you are syncing with syncapp are in the local dropbox *(etc) directory?

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With over 17 pages, I am not sure if this wish has been posted:

- One way sync (Not read only sync) that would allow me to push files out but if they are removed on the other end they are not synchronized again. For example, When I dump a file into my "Add to Itunes" folder on my computer here at work,it syncs over to my computer at home where itunes picks it up and moves it. This results in it getting deleted on source folder. If I set it up with a read only code then I believe it will just continue to download and move the new copy in a loop.

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I'm not sure if this has been asked for, but when doing a one-way sync ("read-only"), rogue files on the destination machine should be removed. For example, if the user on the destination adds a file to the read-only directory, the sync process should remove it. Perhaps this could be a "force" option selected by the source machine. Unison does this. It basically fixes the destination folder if the remote user messes it up. It is also required to have a true "mirror" between the source and destination machine. Very nice app, this is the only feature I found missing (or I missed it somehow!).

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Great stuff, I'm trying to set up an offsite backup solution with one or more friends and peers. We are all using Qnap/Synology NAS units and would be running BT Sync natively on them 24 hours a day.

3 features we'd love to see have already been mentioned in previous posts so I just thought I'd +1 them here:

1) remote data encryption and access permissions. I want to one-way sync my selected data files to my friends NAS but I don't want him in there poking around in my private stuff and vice-versa.

2) scheduled sync.

3) versioning.

I'll be watching this with interest over the coming months.

 

Edited by GreatMarko
Struck-through items are suggestions which now have their own dedicated threads in the Feature Requests forum
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I have a similar issue, but you can get round the temp files part, by excluding them using the SyncIgnore file that is created in each folder. Its not perfect, but may give you a partial fix. I too would love a scheduler ;)

Cheers for the suggestion, but the problem I have is the files in question are only considered temp in hindsight, eg: maybe a bad render that gets re-done a few times. Cases where I'm hoping the result is not temp, but say I notice a problem and have to re-do it, in hindsight that first render now becomes an unnecessary temp file (but a very very large one).

Also some apps I use automatically generate backup versions of files, which can be quite large. I need these files to sync, so can't exclude them, but I'd be happy with it happening once a day rather than when I'm working. Disk IO performance is a huge thing for my uses, I can't have a utility crawling the drive when I'm trying to read off it at maximum speed etc.

My short term solution is to just pause btsync and then enable it when I'm done - not really the best solution but kinda works for now.

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Exclude list is important and maybe easy to be implemented.

During sync, multiple user operating a folder may cause conflicted, unnecessary files.

So I think something like git's ".gitignore" is very important, which help us to exclude *.tmp, *.swp, *.ini, etc..

Resolved, use ".SyncIgnore".

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Sorry if this has already been requested, but if we could have a server application that could support multiple clients that would be great.

Currently I use another synchronization tool for multiple individual client backups to our datacenter and would need user authentication and home directories.

Currently we synchronize server images but if we could use a BT sync client then we could easily add user profiles to the list of things we can backup.

Thanks

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Two strong wishes I had during daily work with BTSync:

- Ability to change the folder path AFTER a sync was configured (e.g. when I moved this folder to another place)

- Option to not delete (or move to .SyncTrash) any file in the target folder of a RO-Sync. (I use BTSync to one-way sync some folders from my PC to my NAS, e.g. when I rip a DVD to my PC and sync it directly to my library on the NAS. After the sync is finished, I don't need the file on my PC anymore and delete it. In that case I don't want to have it moved to the .SyncTrash on my NAS.)

Again I have to say THANK YOU for this amazing tool!!!

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Public links:

Would be great to have this as a plugin or something.

I really don't want my personal computer to open a TCP UPNP port through my NAT firewall just to share a single file so somebody else. And: Usually I use those "copy public link" mechanisms of e.g. dropbox in e-mails, sometimes in mailing lists and newsgroups. I don't want to keep my laptop powwered on and online, which would be required to make this public link available.

Instead, I can thing of a dedicated simplified share-only webserver module running "somewhere". The local "copy public link" mechanism could push a one-time secret to the share-only webserver module and make the webserver download this file. The public link would not point to my laptop but to this share-only webserver. There could be a tiny btsync instance running on an ordenary webserver that gets "per file secrets", loads dedicated files from my computer and just writes them to the local file system. Maybe the "per file secret" instance could be implemented in PHP or something, which would allow to use a really cheap small space webhoster as publishing proxy.

Restrict listeners to dedicate interfaces:

I'm running a cheal VPS having a couple of GB of space. This VPS comes with two IPv4 IP addresses and as many IPv6 IP addresses as I want. Each additional IPv6 address is for free, each additional IPv4 address costs $2 a month. I don't want the btsync process bind to all of my IP addresses. There's realy no need for this. Especially because I want the service use common ports that remain untouched by the most of hotel NAT firewall routers, such as 53 or 80, I just don't want btsync to block *:80 but only eth3:80.

Rename foreign nodes locally:

My computers are called "computer.internal.mydomain.de", "server.internal.mydomain.de", "cheapvps.mydomain.de" etc.

Then I added two computers at my company, which are named "desktop.internal.mycompany.de" and "laptop.internal.mycompany.de".

Now I'm sharing a sync with a friend who calls his computers "black" and "white" because that's their colors. And I'm sharing another sync with another friend who calls his computers some other crazy names.

I want to be able to rename connected computers locally.

Block foreign nodes:

I run a couple of computers at my network and it doesn't make sense to have them all-way sync. Especially because currently the all-way sync seams to be somehow broken (but I will open another thread for this later).

Think about this (as a current situation):

  • Available computers are: computer1.home, computer2.home, server.home, computer1.comany, computer2.company, server.company.
  • *.home is wired by 1GBit cable
  • *.company/s is wired by 1GBit/s cable
  • *.home to *.company can upload with ~0.5MBit/s
  • *.company to *.home can upload with 10MBit/s

I want to be able to (in addition to the upper configuration) set something like this:

  • computer1.home is restricted to only sync with server.home
  • computer2.home is restricted to only sync with server.home
  • computer1.company is restricted to only sync with server.company
  • computer2.company is restricted to only sync with server.company

I know that this conflicts with the p2p thought. But because the sync is always done with the highest priority through local network in the first place, I can simply switch off my computer1 and computer2 as soon as they are completed. The servers sync themselfs in another step.

The current situation I have looks like this: My computer1 starts syncing with "all" of the nodes at the same time, and it's completely random which node finishes sync as the first one. Very ofen my computer1.home starts syncing with all nodes at the same time and computer2.company is the first node that completes syncing, after ~60 seconds even if it's only a 20KB text file.

Only using LAN here isn't enough, because all computers (except the servers) are laptop and might be moved to other places like hotels or cafes. So LAN sync only isn't exactly what I want.

I would suggest something like three restrincting levels:

  • sync with everybody sharing the same secret, except a couple of non-sync nodes the user can select in a configuration menu
  • sync with nobody execpt a couple of sync nodes (sharing the same secret, of course) the user can select in a configuration menu
  • each time a new node wants to sync, the local user has to select if sync or no-sync.

That's a little bit like security level of some desktop firewalls I know.

Kind regards,

Stephan.

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My personal wish list:

A) Automation

B) Automation

C) Automation

What I want to say:

I would love to see BTSync being

a) absolutely quiet in operation - "Stealth mode" (no open gui, no change of focus, no message or error pop-ups)

B) being fully configurable (creation of sync options, creation of share key) and operable (starty sync, schedule sync, stop sync) via command-line or popular scripting methods like JScript or VBScript (or other Shell scripts)

c) creating live reports to log files or system logs that can be filtered to learn about proper operation

My scenario is as follows:

I have a couple of data storage devices and an operation center device which echoes different folders to different client systems when these go online. The client systems should have no control over the syncing process or configuration. All systems are running in a local network and internet access is not guaranteed during all times.

Cheers for thinking about it.

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Hi, great to hear the Sync developers are open to suggestions!

I'd like to request a way of updating files within sync folders using changesets/diffs/detas. From my understanding, if a file changes, the altered chunks are sent. This assumes though that the change is in-place. If the content of the file is offset by even one byte though, the entire thing must be resent.

My colleagues and I would like to work on a collection of very large graphics files (100MBs+, GBs). Changes are very iterative - only small parts of the file change at any one time. If I tweak just a few bytes, it seems rather wasteful to transfer the rest from scratch.

Due to the distributed nature of BT, each user sharing a folder needs to seed enough deltas for others to reconstruct their files. This is good for other users - they have a greater chance of finding a diff that will update their local version, even if it hasn't been synced in a while and has undergone many changes in the meantime. The tradeoff is that more disk space is required. If a suitable diff isn't available then the whole file has to be downloaded in its entirety.

So in the worse case, the system falls back to current behaviour. However, for certain usage patterns, a delta seeding scheme would prove extremely advantagous.

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Hi, I'd like to add a +1 to arharvey's request. BTSYNC has a great future in very large file transfer and saving bandwidth as much as possible would be very helpful.

In our case, the most common transfer type would be as follows:

file_v001 (4.8Gb)

file_v002 (5Gb)

>create v002-v001 diff (2Mb)

file_v003 (6Gb)

>create v003-v002 diff (1Gb)

>create v003-v001 diff (1.2Gb)

If any user has file_v001 and wants either v002 or v003 they only need to download the diff to regenerate the file they want locally. Thus less bandwidth used, faster transfers and syncing. We believe it's a fairly new paradigm but would be beneficial in a collaborative environment which relies on a number of users editing small part of large files.

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Hello

My petition is in a Red Only mode have diverse modes of Sync.

Actual mode of Read Only Share

A to B , but no B to A , No Resync when B delete any files

I need mode Rsync Always

A to B , But NO B to A, And Rsync files when B delete any file , Mirror mode :)

TX

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There should be an option to see IPs of relays in between. We have a bunch VMs for each of our projects on each workstation and the guest VMs run btsync to sync files to a repository within the host(the workstation) and the VMs are shown to be connecting with a relay, even though the connection between the host and guest is in bridged mode.

It would be great if we could see who the relay is/are for the connections.

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Great software :-)

I use this for private offsite backup and it works allmost perfect.

As I understand it 'read only' sharing is oneway sync of files added/deleted

I would like to be able to make a shared folder 'non deleting' so files can be added but not deleted.

Thanks

I too have seen this many times and think it would be an awesome addition. Let me provide a scenario.

My family and I are heading to the beach next week. I already have a Bittorrent sync folder set up on my Unraid Nas and it is working beautifully. I want to add a folder say called Beach pics to NAS and Laptop and sync them. Taking my Laptop to the beach with us I will copy the pictures taken from my camera to it. Bittorrent sync will take care of the rest and when syncing is done I can delete them if I choose to make room for more, keeping them safe and sound at home on my NAS. Likewise this feature can be added to the android app to sync pics off the phone (similar to dropbox). No fear of losing a picture because I needed to make room for something else as long as the sync is finished.

Awesome product keep up the good work.

Naelr

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I too have seen this many times and think it would be an awesome addition. Let me provide a scenario.

My family and I are heading to the beach next week. I already have a Bittorrent sync folder set up on my Unraid Nas and it is working beautifully. I want to add a folder say called Beach pics to NAS and Laptop and sync them. Taking my Laptop to the beach with us I will copy the pictures taken from my camera to it. Bittorrent sync will take care of the rest and when syncing is done I can delete them if I choose to make room for more, keeping them safe and sound at home on my NAS. Likewise this feature can be added to the android app to sync pics off the phone (similar to dropbox). No fear of losing a picture because I needed to make room for something else as long as the sync is finished.

Awesome product keep up the good work.

Naelr

I just wrote one topic with this same intention, bu it the wrong forum. Now, follows:

If one uses a remote machine as his storage server, a write only permission secret, from the server, would allow the users to only include files on that server, instead of downloading everything on it which was there from before.

i.e. With pictures. New pictures were added to your brand new computer. It could upload it, without downloading your terabytes pictures full archive.

Suggesting only the functionality. The write only permission was just a way to draw it.

(congrats for what has been already done!!!)

Best.



The read only secret would work in the opposite way, but only if there were only two computers in the sync.

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