Re: Synchronize two computers
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:54:13AM +0000, Joe wrote:
> Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>> Hi to all Debian users.
>>
>> I just bought the Acer One netbook, on which Lenny seems to work fine. What I
>> need now is:
>>
>> 1) connect it to my old Hyundai laptop so to share data between the two;
>>
>> 2) periodically save, e.g. to the Hyundai the changes I made in my home
>> directory in the Acer and viceversa. I wish that only the files that really
>> changed were copied, so to save useless time.
>>
>> Can anybody provide suggestions about both issues? I've never connected two
>> machines together.
>>
>
> Unison will indeed do it, but the GUI will expect to find the source and
> destination as directories. If you are already running a Samba
> file-sharing server on one of the machines, that is the simplest way.
> From what you say, I doubt that you are.
>
> If you are not, and don't want the complication of Samba or NFS, then
> you will need to learn some of the complication of rsync, which is the
> command-line program which is used by Unison. It is very versatile, but
> you will need only the most basic functions, and you will need to
> arrange a means of transfer between the machines. SSH is much simpler to
> organise than Samba, and is the preferred means anyway, and you may find
> one or other of the installations already has the SSH daemon running. If
> not, it's easy to organise with Debian.
>
Don't forget rsync's --delete option, so that files that were deleted on
the source will also be deleted on the target drive. I imagine Unison
can do this too, but I've never used it. Anyway, make sure whatever
method you choose handles deleted files properly.
-Rob
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