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Comment by thunderbong | Hacker News Reader

When you set up a folder to sync, you can choose the 'Folder Type' under the 'Advanced' tab. This sets up that folder to do bi-directional sync or not.

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that does not matter, backup should sync files from the phone to the backup-device. it should not sync deletes from the phone to the backup-device. but uni-directional still syncs both, only ignoring delete on the backup-device prevents syncing deletes.

the point is that it's complicated and the 'ignore delete' is easily missed. also because it is not shown in the status. so every time i have to wonder, did i set this up correctly?

and i have to check the status on both the phone and the backup-device to make sure all is right.

when i want to delete something on the phone i have to check on the backup-device to make sure that the file is backed up. because the phones status does not tell me that. it only tells me whether it downloaded everything from other devices which is less usefull, i can see which files are on the phone anyways. i can't see what's been uploaded to the backup-device unless i go look.

just the other day i realized that for a new folder i had not set up ignore-delete. luckily, because i am paranoid, i made a hard-link duplicate of the backup before starting to delete files on the phone.

there is an alternative way, make the sync regular bidirectional but on server have a Cron job that archives(moves to a different directory) backup files that are no longer needed on local devices

Yeah, I think a cron job to move/rsync is the most robust method.

doesn't work for me, because the cron job doesn't know when i no longer need the file on the phone.

if i sync deletes from the backup device to the phone then a cron job to move files would potentially cause files to be removed from the phone before i am done with them.

rsync would cause the files to be duplicated (although i could still hardlink using rsync)

Hmm, what if you use a special directory where you could move the files on your phone once you don't need them? And then the cron job would move stuff from that directory

ah for rsync I meant with --remove-source-files flag -- it's just sometimes rsync is easier to use than move, depending on the hierarchy of your files

from the phone i want the files synced to the backup as soon as they are created. if i only sync those that i don't need then the once i do need never get synced.

unles you mean to sync first, then move files i want to keep on the backup only out of the way and rsync --remove-source-files those files again.

the problem with that is that when i do remove files on the phone, then it's because i need the space. at which point i don't want to wait.

syncthing does what i want. that is not the problem. them problem is only that it is easy to forget to set up ignore-delete, and that it's hard to monitor the sync status of the backup from the phone.

i appreciate the suggestions, but they don't really do much to help my case. what is really needed is an improvement of the syncthing UI and in particular a redesign of the way the status is handled.

for my backup maybe i'll set up an rsync with hard-links to create a second version of all files which protects them from accidental deletion.

How I do this: * Create a unidirectional push only sync between the phone and a remote * Remote has a cron that syncs to backblaze regularly, and deletes from the server (this does not affect the phone) * Delete from the phone whenever I want

I think your complaint is that this is not the simplest use case for syncthing? These complaints seem subjective to me

It has all the features you desire, but the UX/UI is streamlined for synchronization, not archiving.

that is correct. and yes, it is entirely subjective. i am merely reporting my personal experience

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