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How Do You Sync & Manage Your Home Directories?

Posted by kdawson on from the kitchen-sync dept.

digitalderbs writes "A problem plaguing most people with multiple computers is the arduous task of synchronizing files between them: documents, pictures, code, or data. Everyone seems to have their own strategies, whether they involve USB drives, emailed attachments, rsync, or a distributed management system, all of which have varying degrees of success in implementing fast synchronization, interoperability, redundancy and versioning, and encryption. Myself, I've used unison for file synchronization and rsnapshot for backups between two Linux servers and a Mac OS X laptop. I've recently considered adding some sophistication by implementing a version control system like subversion, git, or bazaar, but have found some shortcomings in automating commits and pushing updates to all systems. What system do you use to manage your home directories, and how have they worked for you for managing small files (e.g. dot configs) and large (gigabyte binaries of data) together?"

2 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Different tools for different purposes by joe_cot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    • If you're keeping track of code, use a code repository. Subversion, GIT, Bazaar, etc.
    • If you're trying to keep config files, documents, pictures, etc synced, use DropBox.
    • For bookmarks, use one of the numerous Firefox bookmark syncing extensions, or the Del.icio.us extension (or use DropBox to sync your .mozilla/firefox folder).
    • For multi-GB files, use a portable hard drive, or rsync with a file server in your house/office

    I wouldn't recommend using one tool for every purpose. I wouldn't want to store multi-GB files in SVN, and I wouldn't want to store all my code on an external hard drive. Maybe using DropBox, or rsyncing with a server somewhere would work.

  2. Re:Dropbox by nabsltd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I forget my USB thumb drive, I can log in to my Dropbox account via the web interface from any computer as long as it has net access.

    What ever happened to all the true geeks on ./ ?

    Whenever I need a file, I log in to my webserver and download it. With dynamic IPs, you can get business Internet access for around $70/month for 5Mbps symmetric (cable or FIOS). Hard drives cost around $75/TB, and you can host this sort of thing on just about any computer you have sitting around that can run Linux.

    So, for about $75/month, you can securely store insane amounts of data, and get to it securely from just about anywhere. You could also upload from anywhere with just a tiny bit of web programming.

    I still haven't set up the versioning sort of thing, but there are quite literally hundreds of them that work across a LAN if they can get to the filesystem for both the source and the store.