# Looking for an alternative to Resilio/Bittorent Sync



## PacketMan (Nov 26, 2017)

I'm been a pretty good fan of BTSync, now branded as Resilio.  The FreeBSD port for it is net-p2p/btsync.  When it works it works great, but boys oh boys when it looses it marbles, it can make for a lot of work.  The biggest issue seems to be the state-machine between the noes gets out of whack and nodes are no longer in sync.  What really gets my goat is when you rebuild a few shares as a last hope, and one will resync perfectly fine, and the other two just do nothing.

Anyway, I am looking for an alternative.  Obviously runs on FreeBSD. But also looking for a lot of the similar features including:

My stuff is not stored anywhere but on my machines.
Transmission of data between nodes is encrypted.
Nodes do not need to be on the LAN, but can be spread across a WAN.
Nodes can be behind a NAT appliance, this each node is aware of and correctly uses an inside address, and an outside address.
A file added/changed/deleted on one machine replicates to the other machines automatically.
Available on the ports tree, and has great support inside the community; meaning not here today gone tomorrow.
Available on Android and Apple devices would be big bonus!
I like to concept of using bittorrent under the bonnet to transfer the files/pieces around, but honestly for my use, I don't see that bittorrent is required. As long as the darn syncing process is rock solid.

Thanks in advance guys!

P.M.


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 26, 2017)

Syncthing - net/syncthing


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## PacketMan (Nov 26, 2017)

I duuno lebarondemerde, I use forums as a guide, and it would seem the two forums having the same discussion:  sync broke, sync stuck, sync did something other than sync.  I'm looking for a set-it-and-forget-it system.  I can go months with great success with sync, and then bang marbles all over the floor.  How has your experience been?


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 26, 2017)

Hi.

I am using it since a few months ago when I switched from www/nextcloud. YMMV, but from the point I had it properly set, I never ever needed to do anything more, the stuff just works.

The only exception was in the Android version. After an update it stopped working (syncing), but I just had to backup its configuration, deinstall, install again, and restore the backup. It is properly working since then.

Just to exemplify, I use it to sync my $HOME/* to a jail in my home server, and some stuff to my phone. So, a not very complicated use.


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## PacketMan (Nov 27, 2017)

I've got multiple machines doing multiple folders, and then mobile devices use BTSync to use those servers; so quite a bit of inter-machine meshing going on.  Thanks for the feedback lebarondemerde.

Anyone else?


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 27, 2017)

PacketMan 

You could ask at #freebsd on Freenode, there are a lot of folks also using net/syncthing.


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## PacketMan (Oct 20, 2019)

I never did much about this, but I'm thinking I will have too soon.  Is syncthing the only port available on FreeBSD to use, or any chance there is new software available?  Everyone having great success with those, or do they come with their own 'pile' of issues and broke stuff?


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## rigoletto@ (Oct 20, 2019)

PacketMan said:


> I never did much about this, but I'm thinking I will have too soon.  Is syncthing the only port available on FreeBSD to use, or any chance there is new software available?  Everyone having great success with those, or do they come with their own 'pile' of issues and broke stuff?



I suppose resilio works but that is proprietary and not ported yet.

*[EDIT]*

I've be using since I dropped owncloud/nextcloud without any problems, abd what I ear that works well for everyone. The only annoyance I have is with the Android app which usually delay a lot to sync but I believe this is more related with how Android power management work than with syncthing.


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## xtremae (Oct 20, 2019)

PacketMan said:


> Everyone having great success with those, or do they come with their own 'pile' of issues and broke stuff?


I can't say I've hit any major issues with my admittedly moderate use of syncthing. The daemon has a pretty straight forward configuration and just works. Here is an extensive blog post by vermaden in case you come up against anything unusual.


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## PacketMan (Oct 20, 2019)

Thanks guys.  Is one machine the central hub, or is it peer-to-peer? It says its decentralized but that could be marketing mumbo jumbo that its not centralized to someone else's service.

Edit; an article online suggests it too is peer-to-peer.


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## kpedersen (Oct 20, 2019)

For my torrent server, I use an entirely ssh/cli workflow but it could be adapted.

1) rtorrent to set up a bunch of torrents by ssh'ing into server
2) sshfs to connect to my home machine (using a tunnel from home PC behind NAT to external server)
3) rsync to sync the torrent download folder to my mounted sshfs folder
4) nightly cron job to run rsync

This seems pretty robust. So long as you set up the ssh keys and tweak it so that keep-alive packets are sent. Worst case scenario is that the nightly job fails but then I generally get it the next night.


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## xtremae (Oct 20, 2019)

PacketMan It is P2P with no need for a _syncthing server_.


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