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How Do You Sync & Manage Your Home Directories?
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?"
I recently started playing around with Dropbox for some smaller folders than my entire home directory and haven't yet run into any major problems. And the versioning it provides is nice as well, and as a plus they don't consider the deleted files that they still retain versions of as part of the quota.
I use multiple OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD machines daily. One cannot sync all home directory files, as all the config stuff differs between Gentoo, Debian, FreeBSD, Tiger, and Leopard. So it's mostly down to documents, graphics, and a few audio and video files. For the larger ones, I use a usb stick, the smaller ones I email to myself so they're always available via IMAP servers. But most of all I have a bootable, customized version of systemrescuecd installed on a 16GB usb stick, which at any given moment has all the currently important stuff I need. It works well enough for me.
Caveat Utilitor
For small backups, every ten minutes, I use backintime (based on rsync). For larger, nightly or more rare backups, I use rdiff-backup. Both work over the LAN, or to locally-mounted hard drives.
I carry a 16 Gig USB flash drive with my working files on it. I've using this method since the days of 100 Meg Zip drives and just keep upgrading the media. My flash drive is automatically backed up to my backup server at home in the middle of the night so, if I forget it at the office, I'm only a few hours behind. Besides, I can use free Logmein to log into the office computer and transfer a file if it's got new and important information on it. It works the same way in reverse if I forget it at home. Since my working files are on the USB drive which is also compatible with my Linux machines, it really doesn't make much difference which machine I plug it into. Did I mention encryption? That's a good idea in case you lose the drive if you've got any sensitive information on it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I use git, with flashbake and cron to automate commits, and a simply cron job to automatically update a backup copy on an external hard drive.
I spent a long time tackling this, as I am situated at different locations on different days.
I have 2 desktops and a laptop which must remain sync'd and encrypted. I use TrueCrypt for the encryption.
On my Windows boxes - SyncBack handles it. It can be triggered on write or on insertion, or just periodically. Has version control support. Will sync over FTP (poorly) and can create zip files or burn Cds etc. It's a swiss army knife of sync tools.
The key for getting the most out of a sync program is granularity. Inevitably, you'll have exceptions, and you don't want a PASS/FAIL result for your entire backup set. It works much better to sort files into categories and sync the individual groups than to try to make one profile that does your entire disk array. My 2 cents.
Unison