Syncthing alternatives
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Hi,
As the title suggests: what are alternatives to syncthing that are basically fire and forget, works on multiple device types, and just focuses on file syncing?
I've had over the months the weirdest problems with syncthing, and lately I noticed some of my photos got corrupted, which is an absolute no no for me. I use syncthing currently as a easy automatic backup of documents, photos and other files, between my PCs and my phones (they all send only to the server. Folders are not shared with other devices).
How about Unison, Resilio, or Seafile ?
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How about Unison, Resilio, or Seafile ?
Never tried unison or resilio can check. As for seafile, that is what I had before. At some point I realized I was getting several issues with desktop mostly, and the storage was only accessible from seafile wich in my case I am not OK with. Mostly was the inconsistencies between oses
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First and foremost Syncthing is not a 'backup' utility. Using it for backup is not at all recommended. Especially if you are dealing with Android or Raspberry pi, because the way clock / time works in these systems are pretty weird and create sync conflicts. So don't.
Now to the solution. For backup, use a proper backup solution like Kopia. Modern solutions support browsing the snapshots created as backups. Also creating periodic snapshots ensures better redundancy and better chance for disaster recovery.
Now if you will not use it for backup, take a look at 'Round Sync' available in F-Droid. It's an application built around the execptionally good app, 'rclone'. It is some what similar to Syncthing, but designed in a very different way. Also it is more difficult to configure to copy the files to PC.
I also wanted to mention that I have used Syncthing for many heavy lifting jobs and never faced issues with it. It is a feature complete app, with the philosophy of doing only one thing and doing it perfectly. So if you run into any issues, do reach out to forums or devs. They will definitely help you.
From what I see, kopia is for the desktop. Unless I didn't see something, it is not available for android, which is where more important to have backup in my case
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Hi,
As the title suggests: what are alternatives to syncthing that are basically fire and forget, works on multiple device types, and just focuses on file syncing?
I've had over the months the weirdest problems with syncthing, and lately I noticed some of my photos got corrupted, which is an absolute no no for me. I use syncthing currently as a easy automatic backup of documents, photos and other files, between my PCs and my phones (they all send only to the server. Folders are not shared with other devices).
Ah, just one question - is your current Syncthing use internal to your home network, or does it sync remotely?
Because if you're just having your mobile devices sync files when they get on your home wifi, it's reasonably safe for that to be fire-and-forget, but if you're syncing from public networks into private that really should require some more specific configuration and active control.
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Ah, just one question - is your current Syncthing use internal to your home network, or does it sync remotely?
Because if you're just having your mobile devices sync files when they get on your home wifi, it's reasonably safe for that to be fire-and-forget, but if you're syncing from public networks into private that really should require some more specific configuration and active control.
Great question. I forgot to mention but at this point syncthing is only accessible on my WiFi at home. No VPN to it and no remote locations.
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Hi,
As the title suggests: what are alternatives to syncthing that are basically fire and forget, works on multiple device types, and just focuses on file syncing?
I've had over the months the weirdest problems with syncthing, and lately I noticed some of my photos got corrupted, which is an absolute no no for me. I use syncthing currently as a easy automatic backup of documents, photos and other files, between my PCs and my phones (they all send only to the server. Folders are not shared with other devices).
wrote on last edited by [email protected]FolderSync selectively syncs files/folders from my phone back to my server via ssh. Some folders are on a schedule, some monitor for changes and sync immediately; most are just one-way, some are two-way (files added to the server will sync back to the phone as well as uploading data to the server). There's even one that automatically drops files into paperless-ngx' consume folder for automatic document importing.
From there BorgBackup makes a daily backup of the data, keeping historical backups for years with absolutely incredible efficiency. I currently have 21 backups of about ~550gb each. Borg stores this in 447gb of total disc space.
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This is an interesting one, will check. Thanks! I do have some smb stuff already on the machine, so this might be an easier solution
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I love it, and along with the folder they get dumped into being R/O means Immich (and by extension me.....) can't fugg up the timeline
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Hi,
As the title suggests: what are alternatives to syncthing that are basically fire and forget, works on multiple device types, and just focuses on file syncing?
I've had over the months the weirdest problems with syncthing, and lately I noticed some of my photos got corrupted, which is an absolute no no for me. I use syncthing currently as a easy automatic backup of documents, photos and other files, between my PCs and my phones (they all send only to the server. Folders are not shared with other devices).
Really surprised about this. I am using syncthing now for many years on various devices and never encountered issues with it.
And also, file sync is not a backup solution. -
Ah, just one question - is your current Syncthing use internal to your home network, or does it sync remotely?
Because if you're just having your mobile devices sync files when they get on your home wifi, it's reasonably safe for that to be fire-and-forget, but if you're syncing from public networks into private that really should require some more specific configuration and active control.
Syncthing runs encrypted anyway.
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Had a pixel 8, and now a new pixel 9a. I think the problem is actually a bit messy. On my house I have several access points. There is a chance when syncthing is working, and I am going up or down, phone changes the access point. Syncthing possibly gets a ' oppsie, didn't finish that! Let's go for the next one' kind of issue. Of course, never looked into logs or anything so this is just pure speculation.
Usually the kind of corruption on the photos is the kind that beginning is always there, but at some point gets replaced with gray, hence my theory about the files.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yea, gotta be something odd with your setup.
Currently I have one phone (of several) thats syncing en excess of 10,000 files, some only on Wifi (with 3 access points), some wifi/cell data.
ST knows the state of a file, so a disconnect should have no effect. If you're getting corrupted files, I wonder if something else is going on which may also affect another sync tool.
Try Resilio for the same folders, see if you have the same problem (disable Syncthing of course, otherwise conflicting edits will cause file corruption).
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Hi,
As the title suggests: what are alternatives to syncthing that are basically fire and forget, works on multiple device types, and just focuses on file syncing?
I've had over the months the weirdest problems with syncthing, and lately I noticed some of my photos got corrupted, which is an absolute no no for me. I use syncthing currently as a easy automatic backup of documents, photos and other files, between my PCs and my phones (they all send only to the server. Folders are not shared with other devices).
wrote on last edited by [email protected]That's really weird. I've been using it for mobile-desktop-server-offsite sync for many years, with transfer sizes over 15TB, over WiFi, cellular, cable, fiber. I've never seen data corruption. Conflicts, sometimes. Permission issues, sometimes. Wiping something accidentally, sometimes. It's even more weird because Syncthing performs computes hash values for the files it manages. I don't know if it performs hash validation after copying remotely but if not, it can be forced manually which would tell you what's fucked and be pulled from the source, if it still exists.
Nevermind, it verifies the result:
When a block is copied or received from another device, its SHA256 hash is computed and compared with the expected value. If it matches the block is written to a temporary copy of the file, otherwise it is discarded and Syncthing tries to find another source for the block.
According to this, if you have data corruption it can only occur between copying/moving a temporary file on your destination to another directory, or it could occur on the source itself. Both of those scenarios are a cause of concern and would likely persist with any utility. Moving or copying a file from one location to another on a sane machine should not corrupt it. If I were you I'd ensure my server doesn't eat bits. If not the storage media, it could be bit rot, or bad RAM.
Just in case everything seems fine, let me tell you what I dealt with. I had a Ryzen 5950X machine with 32GB of RAM. It worked well since inception with no signs of RAM or data corruption issues. I test every new machine with Memtest86+. At some point I migrated the storage from Ext4 on LVMRAID to ZFS. All good. Then I wrote an alarm for Prometheus to tell me if there's any issues in ZFS. A week later I get an email about a ZFS error. I check the system - says checksum errors, data has been corrected, applications unaffected, run a scrub to clear. I ran a scrub. A few more checksum errors found, all corrected, we're clean now. There was a strong solar storm around that time, probably that. A couple of weeks later I get another email. Same symptoms, same procedure. No solar storm. Shit. Memtest86+ - pass. Hm. A couple of weeks later I get another. Same thing. Memtest again - nothing. This went on for several months. Meanwhile the off-site backup sees nothing like that. While running Memtest on another machine I noticed that the test passes following the first took longer than the first, a lot longer. I thought something might be wrong with that machine. Dug into it, got into Memtest's source code and discovered that the first pass is shorter on purpose so that it quickly flags obviously bad RAM. Apparently if you want to detect less obvious issues, you have to run multiple passes. OK. Memtest the main server again, pass 1: OK, pass 2: OK, pass 3: OK, pass 4: FAIL. FUCK. Memtest each stick separately for 4 passes: OK. Memtest 2 at a time: OK. Memtest all 4: FAIL. Alright, now we know why ZFS keeps finding checksum errors. Long story short, this machine could not run this RAM in 4-DIMM config. Replaced it with another RAM that's rated to run in 4-DIMM config on that processor. No more checksum issues. If I was running the older Ext4-on-LVMRAID storage stack, I would have caught NONE of these and it would have happily corrupted files here and there. In fact it likely did and I have some corruption. Moral of the story - run many Memtest passes and use checksumming storage stack like ZFS or Btrfs. I strongly recommend ZFS since its stripe RAID works fine unlike Btrfs'es. If you don't find bad RAM, start using it today, even if you're working with a single disk and add redundancy when you can. Only after change Syncthing for something else if you still somehow get corruption without ZFS'es knowledge. And if ZFS tells you that you have checksum errors, you likely have bad hardware.
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That's really weird. I've been using it for mobile-desktop-server-offsite sync for many years, with transfer sizes over 15TB, over WiFi, cellular, cable, fiber. I've never seen data corruption. Conflicts, sometimes. Permission issues, sometimes. Wiping something accidentally, sometimes. It's even more weird because Syncthing performs computes hash values for the files it manages. I don't know if it performs hash validation after copying remotely but if not, it can be forced manually which would tell you what's fucked and be pulled from the source, if it still exists.
Nevermind, it verifies the result:
When a block is copied or received from another device, its SHA256 hash is computed and compared with the expected value. If it matches the block is written to a temporary copy of the file, otherwise it is discarded and Syncthing tries to find another source for the block.
According to this, if you have data corruption it can only occur between copying/moving a temporary file on your destination to another directory, or it could occur on the source itself. Both of those scenarios are a cause of concern and would likely persist with any utility. Moving or copying a file from one location to another on a sane machine should not corrupt it. If I were you I'd ensure my server doesn't eat bits. If not the storage media, it could be bit rot, or bad RAM.
Just in case everything seems fine, let me tell you what I dealt with. I had a Ryzen 5950X machine with 32GB of RAM. It worked well since inception with no signs of RAM or data corruption issues. I test every new machine with Memtest86+. At some point I migrated the storage from Ext4 on LVMRAID to ZFS. All good. Then I wrote an alarm for Prometheus to tell me if there's any issues in ZFS. A week later I get an email about a ZFS error. I check the system - says checksum errors, data has been corrected, applications unaffected, run a scrub to clear. I ran a scrub. A few more checksum errors found, all corrected, we're clean now. There was a strong solar storm around that time, probably that. A couple of weeks later I get another email. Same symptoms, same procedure. No solar storm. Shit. Memtest86+ - pass. Hm. A couple of weeks later I get another. Same thing. Memtest again - nothing. This went on for several months. Meanwhile the off-site backup sees nothing like that. While running Memtest on another machine I noticed that the test passes following the first took longer than the first, a lot longer. I thought something might be wrong with that machine. Dug into it, got into Memtest's source code and discovered that the first pass is shorter on purpose so that it quickly flags obviously bad RAM. Apparently if you want to detect less obvious issues, you have to run multiple passes. OK. Memtest the main server again, pass 1: OK, pass 2: OK, pass 3: OK, pass 4: FAIL. FUCK. Memtest each stick separately for 4 passes: OK. Memtest 2 at a time: OK. Memtest all 4: FAIL. Alright, now we know why ZFS keeps finding checksum errors. Long story short, this machine could not run this RAM in 4-DIMM config. Replaced it with another RAM that's rated to run in 4-DIMM config on that processor. No more checksum issues. If I was running the older Ext4-on-LVMRAID storage stack, I would have caught NONE of these and it would have happily corrupted files here and there. In fact it likely did and I have some corruption. Moral of the story - run many Memtest passes and use checksumming storage stack like ZFS or Btrfs. I strongly recommend ZFS since its stripe RAID works fine unlike Btrfs'es. If you don't find bad RAM, start using it today, even if you're working with a single disk and add redundancy when you can. Only after change Syncthing for something else if you still somehow get corruption without ZFS'es knowledge. And if ZFS tells you that you have checksum errors, you likely have bad hardware.
That is some good info here. My HDD is totally fine (checked it very recently actually), as for the ram last time I checked was ok, but can check again to be sure
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That is some good info here. My HDD is totally fine (checked it very recently actually), as for the ram last time I checked was ok, but can check again to be sure
Check my edit.
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Had a pixel 8, and now a new pixel 9a. I think the problem is actually a bit messy. On my house I have several access points. There is a chance when syncthing is working, and I am going up or down, phone changes the access point. Syncthing possibly gets a ' oppsie, didn't finish that! Let's go for the next one' kind of issue. Of course, never looked into logs or anything so this is just pure speculation.
Usually the kind of corruption on the photos is the kind that beginning is always there, but at some point gets replaced with gray, hence my theory about the files.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Could be a bad AP.
I once had a switch with a failing power supply that would corrupt MP3 artwork when writing to the MP3. That was a weird one to track down.
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That's really weird. I've been using it for mobile-desktop-server-offsite sync for many years, with transfer sizes over 15TB, over WiFi, cellular, cable, fiber. I've never seen data corruption. Conflicts, sometimes. Permission issues, sometimes. Wiping something accidentally, sometimes. It's even more weird because Syncthing performs computes hash values for the files it manages. I don't know if it performs hash validation after copying remotely but if not, it can be forced manually which would tell you what's fucked and be pulled from the source, if it still exists.
Nevermind, it verifies the result:
When a block is copied or received from another device, its SHA256 hash is computed and compared with the expected value. If it matches the block is written to a temporary copy of the file, otherwise it is discarded and Syncthing tries to find another source for the block.
According to this, if you have data corruption it can only occur between copying/moving a temporary file on your destination to another directory, or it could occur on the source itself. Both of those scenarios are a cause of concern and would likely persist with any utility. Moving or copying a file from one location to another on a sane machine should not corrupt it. If I were you I'd ensure my server doesn't eat bits. If not the storage media, it could be bit rot, or bad RAM.
Just in case everything seems fine, let me tell you what I dealt with. I had a Ryzen 5950X machine with 32GB of RAM. It worked well since inception with no signs of RAM or data corruption issues. I test every new machine with Memtest86+. At some point I migrated the storage from Ext4 on LVMRAID to ZFS. All good. Then I wrote an alarm for Prometheus to tell me if there's any issues in ZFS. A week later I get an email about a ZFS error. I check the system - says checksum errors, data has been corrected, applications unaffected, run a scrub to clear. I ran a scrub. A few more checksum errors found, all corrected, we're clean now. There was a strong solar storm around that time, probably that. A couple of weeks later I get another email. Same symptoms, same procedure. No solar storm. Shit. Memtest86+ - pass. Hm. A couple of weeks later I get another. Same thing. Memtest again - nothing. This went on for several months. Meanwhile the off-site backup sees nothing like that. While running Memtest on another machine I noticed that the test passes following the first took longer than the first, a lot longer. I thought something might be wrong with that machine. Dug into it, got into Memtest's source code and discovered that the first pass is shorter on purpose so that it quickly flags obviously bad RAM. Apparently if you want to detect less obvious issues, you have to run multiple passes. OK. Memtest the main server again, pass 1: OK, pass 2: OK, pass 3: OK, pass 4: FAIL. FUCK. Memtest each stick separately for 4 passes: OK. Memtest 2 at a time: OK. Memtest all 4: FAIL. Alright, now we know why ZFS keeps finding checksum errors. Long story short, this machine could not run this RAM in 4-DIMM config. Replaced it with another RAM that's rated to run in 4-DIMM config on that processor. No more checksum issues. If I was running the older Ext4-on-LVMRAID storage stack, I would have caught NONE of these and it would have happily corrupted files here and there. In fact it likely did and I have some corruption. Moral of the story - run many Memtest passes and use checksumming storage stack like ZFS or Btrfs. I strongly recommend ZFS since its stripe RAID works fine unlike Btrfs'es. If you don't find bad RAM, start using it today, even if you're working with a single disk and add redundancy when you can. Only after change Syncthing for something else if you still somehow get corruption without ZFS'es knowledge. And if ZFS tells you that you have checksum errors, you likely have bad hardware.
Dug into it, got into Memtest’s source code and discovered that the first pass is shorter on purpose so that it quickly flags obviously bad RAM. Apparently if you want to detect less obvious issues, you have to run multiple passes.
I thought it was common knowledge that Memtest needed to be run for multiple passes to truly verify there are no issues. Seems that's one of those things that stopped being passed down in the community over the years. Back when I was first learning about overclocking around 2005 that was emphasized HEAVILY, with the recommendation to run it at least overnight, and a minimum of 10 passes.
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Dug into it, got into Memtest’s source code and discovered that the first pass is shorter on purpose so that it quickly flags obviously bad RAM. Apparently if you want to detect less obvious issues, you have to run multiple passes.
I thought it was common knowledge that Memtest needed to be run for multiple passes to truly verify there are no issues. Seems that's one of those things that stopped being passed down in the community over the years. Back when I was first learning about overclocking around 2005 that was emphasized HEAVILY, with the recommendation to run it at least overnight, and a minimum of 10 passes.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]It's kind of embarrassing because I used to work as a service technician at a popular computer store in the 2000s and Memtest86+ has been a standard fare of testing. I guess outside of OC, the shorter first pass truly was enough to spot bad RAM in the vast majority of cases. Plus multichannel interactions were not nearly as prevalent in the DDR1/2/3 days. I recently installed 4 DIMMS for 128GB on an AM5 machine just to discover that the 5600 RAM only boots at 3600 in a 4-DIMM config, as per AMD's docs. Could force it higher but without extra adjustment it can't go beyond 4600 on this machine. Back in the day, different DIMMs, often with different chips worked in 2, 4-DIMM configs so long as they matched their JEDEC spec. backinmyday.jpg
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Really surprised about this. I am using syncthing now for many years on various devices and never encountered issues with it.
And also, file sync is not a backup solution.Ditto.
I get angry with SyncThing; don't get me wrong. I really wish they'd add a per-file-type merge plugin capability, and I get far more sync conflicts than I care for. I get situations where a client on one computer stops (mostly, Android killing it) and it needs to be manually restarted.
What I've never had it data corruption. It's to the point where I implicitly trust that if SyncThing says it's synced, I know it's on the destination. It might be a stored as a sync conflict, but it's there.
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It's kind of embarrassing because I used to work as a service technician at a popular computer store in the 2000s and Memtest86+ has been a standard fare of testing. I guess outside of OC, the shorter first pass truly was enough to spot bad RAM in the vast majority of cases. Plus multichannel interactions were not nearly as prevalent in the DDR1/2/3 days. I recently installed 4 DIMMS for 128GB on an AM5 machine just to discover that the 5600 RAM only boots at 3600 in a 4-DIMM config, as per AMD's docs. Could force it higher but without extra adjustment it can't go beyond 4600 on this machine. Back in the day, different DIMMs, often with different chips worked in 2, 4-DIMM configs so long as they matched their JEDEC spec. backinmyday.jpg
Yeah AMD's memory controllers, especially DDR5 seem to have a lot more difficulty at high speed with 4 slots filled. I used to plan upgrades around populating 2 slots and doubling if needed a few years later, instead now you really need to plan to ignore those slots if you are needing memory performance for things like gaming versus raw capacity.
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Yeah AMD's memory controllers, especially DDR5 seem to have a lot more difficulty at high speed with 4 slots filled. I used to plan upgrades around populating 2 slots and doubling if needed a few years later, instead now you really need to plan to ignore those slots if you are needing memory performance for things like gaming versus raw capacity.
Yeah, I didn't need 128GB, but as soon as I figured what's going on with the 4-DIMM config, I ordered another kit to fill what I think I'd need for the lifetime of the system.
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Check my edit.
That is some crazy story right there. I do know for a fact that memtest needs multiple passes. But in my case the machine only has 1 stick of ram (used to have 2, one died). I will probably do a memtest overnight and get at you tomorrow.
