Syncd is a bash script that watches for file changes and rsyncs them to a remote machine or locally. It uses inotify to watch for file system changes and syncs the whole directory using rsync. The script makes sure to aggregate change events during a running rsync, such that after the initial sync a subsequent sync can be triggered (and so on).
This works great for syncing folders within a machine or over ssh. I use to to keep a real-time mirror of my data drive on a USB drive. I use it for development on other headless machinces like a raspberry pi. In this way I can work in my fast dev computer with my favorite tools yet the code runs in real-time on this other headless machine. I am sure you can come up with other uses.
I have done several improvements over the now unmaintained 2014 forked repo.
- Both local and remote syncing.
- Put your configuration files in multiple places
- Added a dyncd script which will load a whole directory of conf files for multiple directory syncs in one command.
- Added some rync excludes you can use and/or modify
- Added explanations inside sample conf file
A linux based system with inotify-tools and rsync installed is required, .e.g for ubuntu/debian based systems run
apt-get install inotify-tools rsync
- Clone the script in a directory of your choice, e.g.
cd ~/opt
https://github.com/dkebler/syncd.git
- Best, put syncd in your $PATH, for example by running:
cd syncd
sudo ln -s $PWD/syncd /usr/local/bin/syncd
See the jobs/syncd.conf.example conf file for details on what goes in a conf file.
Take this .conf file in the jobs directory and copy/rename it (remove .example) and put it where it will be found (see list below)
Syncd will find this file if you put it any one of these places.
- jobs directory or (or subdirectory there of) as set by the
JOBS_DIRvariable in the script (default is/jobsunder the folder where you cloned the repo ) - In a
/syncdsub folder of your pwd (which could be the directory being synced) - pwd
- Some absolute path given in the command
If syncd can't find your conf file(s) it will let you now.
- The first argument is your configuration file without the .conf extension
- The Second (Action) argument are (start,stop,restart,status) as well as "run" for manually triggering a rsync and "log" for checking the rsync output.
alway do a run first to test your rsync command before using start which creates a background process watching for changes
once started you can use the status command to assure that the process was started. Then it's a good idea to test by adding dumby file or folder to your source and see if it magically appears in your target. If you used the delete flag in your rsync options you could then delete the folder/file in your source and confirm it disappears from your target.
syncd myjob run # always do a one off run first to test your rsync command
syncd myjob start # will look in jobs directory, pwd dir, or pwd/syncd
syncd subdirofjobs/myjob start # relative to jobs directory
syncd /home/name/jobs/myjob start # absolute path
By default, the script will create a pid and log file within a directory of the same within the JOBS_DIR specified in the script.
To change this default folder for jobs edit the syncd script file and change the JOBS_DIR to some absolute path of your choice
To run a whole set of conf files put them all in a single directory and run the dsyncd script.
dsyncd somesubdir start
It will look in somesubdir of the JOBS_DIR as set in dsyncd and process all the .conf files it finds. Again you can set an absolute path for the JOBS_DIR variable in the dsyncd script or use the default but it should match the same in the syncd script.
Forked from syncd