On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:06:16 +0100 Joel <j-archlinux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > as we have a discussion ongoing about setting up a new PC, I thought > I could jump in with my current issue : I have retired my laptop and > bought a desktop PC. Gone through the fresh installation process > (once every 12 years is OK to declutter a bit), and rsync'ed my home > directory (parts of it, mostlyskipped ~/.local and~/.config where I > found some 10-20 years old files from programs I used once but never > since). > > Now I still want to use my laptop when I'm on the road, which happens > rather seldomly (once every 2 weeks), i.e. have my files, my > bookmarks etc available on my laptop. Also not only have to sync > my /home/$USER but also /root and some more mountpoints (source code, > website stuff, audio, video, pictures), totaling around 1.5TB of data > > I've been playing around with rsync and adding many many exclude > rules to > > a) limit the amount of files being transferred (eg exclude ~/.cache, > browser's cache, thunderbird's imap cache etc) so I can keep an > overview if something is getting overwritten that I don't want > > b) keep certain files (especially XFCE config etc) distinct as eg I > have 2 monitors on my PC vs only 1 on the laptop -> different menus, > window settings etc > > Now this is pretty tedious, initial rsync's dry-run showed ~700k > files that would be sync'ed, which I brought down to 1k after several > iterations and adjustment of exclude settings, and this is so far my > first run - currently using my laptop and will sync back when I'm > home again... let's see how many files will differ then ! > > So I'm looking for more easy-to-use alternatives. Most important > thing : I want dry-run functionality to prevent unwanted data loss, > which means automatic sync tools are not the way to go ! I think > synthing is such a candidate, unless I missed the dry-run option > somewhere. Have used unison many many years ago, but I think it was > also not perfect and had issues handling thousands/millions of files. > Heard of some new systemd homesync (?), but didn't have a look at it > now, sounds also like it automatically syncs. The systemd home stuff is all pretty new - I wouldn't use it yet myself. > Any thoughts / recommendations / advices ? Now you've gone through the painful bit of setting up a suitable rsync command, why not just store that in a file as a bash script somewhere (maybe ~/bin ?) Then you can easily use it whenever you want and shouldn't need to spend any more time than typing its name :) > Many thanks > > Joel
