Comments on Install Bittorrent Sync on Debian / Ubuntu
Install Bittorrent Sync on Debian / Ubuntu BitTorrent Sync is a new piece of software by BitTorrent Inc. - the original creator of the BitTorrent protocol. While most might be familiar with BitTorrent, only a few know of BitTorrent Sync. Normal .torrent files are static and once created they can't be altered anymore. BitTorrent Sync however allows updates to the data and syncs them to the peers. BitTorrent Sync is also available cross-plattform (Linux, Android, Windows, Mac OSX, iOS) and it has two distinctive operation modes. You can have a many-to-many synchronization meaning that every node can alter the content and have it synced to the other devices. Or you can have a one-to-many synchronization meaning that only the Master Node can alter data and this is then synced to all other nodes. Especially the one-to-many synchronization is of interested if you want to create backups and store them at multiple sites - using the power of BitTorrent swarms (meaning each nodes starts providing updates to other nodes as soon as they are received).
5 Comment(s)
Comments
Nice write up. Minus a few unimportant mistakes. Like "moste" is usually spelled "most". I'll bookmark this article.
On an aside. There are a few concerns. The people behind bittorrent sync ignore or hide from known issues. The most important is how the product does not scale up to handle 100s of GBs. So if you are trying to keep in sync a modern day hard disk full of say pictures you will notice your computer is no longer your computer. Instead it is locked out chugging away forever checking looking to see if a file needs to be synced. This is obviously a design flaw but it's been like this since day 1 and the folk behind btsync ignore it.
From what I read in the docs btsync is only limited by the power (cpu/ram/diskspace) that's available on your clients. This far I only sync several folder ranging from 2GB to 40 GB and haven't noticed a problem with those.
Also, it's still in Beta stage IIRC.
Agreed - you make some valid points there.
However, where I feel that it really does shine is as a backup system for "people who don't do backups". I have a couple of users who have effectively ignored all the semi-automated backup solutions I've put in place, so I then setup btsync to monitor their desktops and "My Documents" folders. Shortly after they make a change it's backed up, transparently. End of problem and everyone's happy.
On Debian, use: service btsync start
d'oh... my mistake
of course it should be: service {servicename} {action} and hence - service btsync restart
Just mixed the two arguments :) but it's fixed now