Unisync

A hackable inotify daemon for Unison..

Features

Unisync.py uses inotify to detect changes in the local unison root and employs the venerable file synchronizer unison to do the real sync.

On start, it runs a full-sync. After that, only localy changed files are syncronized, unless a full-sync is triggered with sigalarm.

Setup

sudo apt install python3 unison python3-pyinotify

#optionally for onscreen notifications:
sudo apt install xosd-bin

• copy or link unisync.py to a directory included in $PATH, e.g. $HOME/bin/

• It is possible to create a local root with links to the directories and files that should be syncronized

• Setup unison profile in $HOME/.unison/<profile>.prf

Usage

unison profile # initial sync

unisync.py profile # run as daemon

Limitations

• Unisync.py doesn't detect live changes at the remote root. However unison is able to synchronize bidirectional if a full-sync is triggered.

  • A full-sync can be triggered by sending an alarm signal to the unisync.py process: pkill -ALRM unisync.py (that can easily be used from a keyboard shortcut)

• Only links directly below the root directory are watched by unisync.py

• Unison must be configured with the follow property to follow specific links to sync their targets (e.g.: follow = Name link_* to follow all links with the prefix link_)

Troubleshooting

• Make sure to use the same unison version on all devices, otherwise unisons binary exchange format may be incompatible.
• For Ubuntu you can also download and use a specific deb-package from debian if compatibility with other debian based distributions is required (like Raspbian).

TODO

• Sync on server-update: Broker service: publish last modifcation of state-file

  • .unison/arXYZ -> roots in line 2
  • filename calculation:
    • 'unison -ignore 'Regex .*' -showarchive'
    • [update.ml:232]

• (GUI with status icon)