Synchrorep: A simple way to synchronize folders

Synchorep is an opensource software to synchronize two directories, that mean reporting all modifications of one to the other and vice versa. At the end of synchronization, both directories will be strictly the same.

This is usefull principaly for nomads who work with a laptop or usb key but may interest also users who want making differencial copy to gain time.

Here is a brief description of functionality :

• One click synchronization using contextual menu
• If we don’t want overload the contextual menu, desactivate it and create an icon on desktop to drag folders onto
• Synchronizations events are stocked in a database which allow detection of deletions and conflicts events.
• In case of deletion or conflicts, the user is asked for what to do
• No files are deleted or overwriten, but they are put to trash to avoid data loose
• The behaviour of synchronizations is customizable (ex : take systematically the most recent file in case of conflicts, without asking).
• Synchronization from or to a ftp, a samba or ssh network share, mounted on the desktop
• Detect time differences between local system and remote system
• Management of synchronizations groups, allow to launch several synchronizations in one click
• From the version 1.5 : You can make differential copy (unidirectional synchronization)

Installation

The software it’s released as .deb package, and the latest version it’s the 1.5.2.
To install it on Ubuntu, once you have downloaded it open a terminal and run:

sudo dpkg -i synchrorep-1.5.2-i386.deb

The following packages are required and on ubuntu they will be installed automatically :

libsqlite3-0
libgtk2.0-0 (>=2.18.3-1)

Setup and Usage

Once installed run it via Applications > System Tools > Synchrorep. or from a terminal use the command:

synchrorep --config

This will open the dialog box that you can see on the right, where you can choose to activate the context menu and create an icon on the desktop where you can drag the folder to synchronize. Checking the Expert box enables numerous options which you can change such as what you want to do with the deleted or modified files in both folders, etc.

For the use of the program i suggest to to take a look at the official tutorial there is a clear example on how to use the context menu.
An alternative is to create the icon on the desktop and then drag there the folder you want to sync, once done a dialog will show up asking you some question regarding where do you want to sync that directory.

Once done the first setup you can modify or delete a “sync link” between 2 directory going in the config menu

Conclusions

I know in these days it’s common to use dropbox, ubuntu one or other cloud solutions, for this things, but with Synchrorep you can easily create and manage a backup of your more important folders on your USB drive, or perhaps on your home computer that is mounted on your laptop via NFS or sshfs.

It’s easy to setup and once done it will do the work automatically for you, a good home solution for a personal backup.

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