[Owncloud] sync files with 2 sync clients

[Philippe Froidevaux]

Hi, 
I'll try to reply, because I also have a big issue here, too much problems for a single bug repport :P
The documentation says : "First it is important to recall what syncing is. Syncing tries to keep the files on both repositories the same. That means if a file is added to one repository it is going to be copied to the other repository. If a file is changed on one repository, the change is propagated to the other repository. And also, if a file is deleted on one side, it is deleted on the other. As a matter of fact, in ownCloud syncing we do not have a typical client/server system where the server is always master."
Thus in theory, it should works as you describe.
In practice, it won't. I have tried same simple use case and most of them break (Note : I test mostly larges files, more than 200 Mb, but let far enough time to complete a download - or a removing...). For example :- I put some files on the client, they sync on the server. But after multiple client reboot, I saw multiple "conflict" files (the files haven't changed at all)- I put some files on the client, they sync on the server. If I remove them on the client, they stay on the server.- I put some files on the client, they sync on the server. If I remove them on the server, they stay on the client.- I put some files on the client, they sync on the server. On a second client, they don't appear anywhere.
This, and some design choices, make the client almost unusable. It's only ok to sync some file from a client to a server. But even for this task :- the client sync the file given the file's date, and ignore the file hash. So it seems it will sync if just the date has changed- the client sync/upload the file even if the file already exists elsewhere on the server (a simple hash database would avoid this, and use a copy instead of downloading/uploading a whole file)- the client seems to scan the whole directory every x seconds, thus take a lot of CPU/disc ressource. It's unusable if you have, for example, 20'000 photos :D . Syncing only the changed files based of access history would avoid this
Etc. etc. :D
It seems to me there is a lot of (re)design work to do here, before having a Dropbox-like storage cloud. The OwnCloud client is NOT ready for any serious usage for now. Even for just sharing files with friends, the multiple "conflicts" files are quiet odd :p

<off-topic, judgement> OwnCloud is a very great tool, and very promising. A lot of great job has been done. But it certainly need to focus on stabilising the key features before adding new funtionnalities. </offtopic>

Cheers,Philippe




> Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 13:43:59 +0100
> From: sat at dispromedia.com
> To: owncloud at kde.org
> Subject: [Owncloud]  sync files with 2 sync clients
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm testing the last Sync client for windows with the last release of 
> owncloud 4.5.1a, and I've got one question:
> The case is that I've got 2 laptops, and I want to sync the same folders 
> and files in the two laptops with the same owncloud account, it's possible?
> 
> Testing this case, if I upload one file to my owncloud folder 
> "synclient" account with Laptop 1 then Laptop 2 don't sync this file 
> (Laptop 2 don't download files uploaded with Laptop 1)
> 
> Thanks and sorry for my english
> Congratulations for all your work, Owncloud works great!! ;-)
> Xavier
> -- 
> 
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