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by eloisius 1150 days ago
Syncthing saved my ass last month. My Framework laptop got stolen while I was traveling. I was able to pick up a second-hand MacBook Air, connect it to my introducer, and within a few hours I had all my files back.

I have a Pi with software RAID and two HDDs running Syncthing in my apartment. I rent a cheap Storage VPS from time4vps.com which is untrusted and set as an introducer--meaning, the data is encrypted before it reaches the VPS, and as an introducer it will announce devices to one another. My (former) laptop and an iMac where I do all my work are always in sync. If I need to add a new device, I only have to connect it to the VPS and suddenly all the other devices know of it.

2 comments

nice setup, do you maintain the project too often? Does it go obsolete due to any update? Or is that just ssh and scp?
It’s surprisingly easy to maintain. I’m not someone that enjoys tinkering with shit like this to be honest, but I didn’t want to put my entire photo collection and what-have-you on Dropbox. Setting up the software raid was difficult. I ran into a tar pit with that, but it turned out the Pi can’t power two drives at once, and a powered USB hub was all I needed. Otherwise, I’ve only sshed into the VPS a handful of times in the year that it’s been running. I haven’t had to to touch Syncthing on the Pi. I probably need to run apt upgrade somewhere, but it’s all working fine.
why not use the syncthing introducer thingy? You concerned they gonna spy on the packets or what?
That's not what an introducer is. It's an easier way of configuring which computers can synchronize with each other, not to be mistaken for a relay.