Laptop/Server Data Synchronization?

gbr writes "I've been trying to automatically synchronize data between a laptop and a server. When the laptop is connected to the network, I want all writes to automatically propagate across to the server. When the laptop is disconnected I want the laptop user to continue working with the local data. When the laptop is reconnected, I want the data to automatically re-sync. The issue is, the data on the server may have changed as well, which needs to propagate back to the laptop. The data doesn't contain anything too special, no database tables etc. It does contain binary data such as executables and word processing documents. I've looked at ChironFS, Unison file sync, and drbd. ChironFS needs a manual rebuild if a connection fails, and the user needs to know which machine contains the correct data. Unison requires the user to initiate the synchronization process manually every time, and drbd is just not meant for the job at hand. How do you automatically, and invisibly to the user (except in the case of conflicts), synchronize between a laptop and a server?"

Comments

Re:iFolder?

[LadyLucky]

iFolder is pretty lame. We moved to a Novell-type infrastructure at work and trust me, the best way is to use all that installed software as little as possible. It just doesn't work properly.

For example, if you try to share the folder on a new instance (say because your laptop died, a pretty valid use case) it can't seem to figure out to pull everything down, rather than push up deletions.

In short, like everything else from Novell, it's got some neat features, that are too buggy to be useful and have a user interface made by a sadist.