Warnings about not syncing symlinks

Bugs and issues Linux
#23

Here is my approach. I have several computers (home desktop, office desktop, various laptops), all running a recent version of Ubuntu Linux. The home directories of each of these contain several directories (bin, Desktop, lib, …) which are specific to the local machine and are not synced to google drive. But the rest of the home directory is synced between all machines as follows. Each home directory contains a directory Insync/gdrive. This is my Insync folder on each of the machines, so when anything in this directory is changed on any of my machines, the change is propagated by Insync to google drive and from there back to all the other machines. (On all machines I have “Sync new children of partially-synced folders automatically” set and “Sync new top-level cloud items automatically” unset).

Inside Insync/gdrive I have a directory called home and inside that a bunch of subdirectories (programs, images, …) which is where the main contents of my home directory reside. To make it easier to access these I have symlinks

~/programs -> Insync/gdrive/home/programs
~/images -> Insync/gdrive/home/images

etc.

This works nearly perfectly for my needs. The one thing that does not work is symlinks inside the directory Insync/gdrive/home. If I create or delete a symlink on one machine, I have to manually create it on all the other machines.

#24

In the past I have used Insync to backup symlinked files and folders for years with no issues, and when I had signed up for the service, this was a major marketing and selling point.

Why was this feature dropped? It really was very useful.

#25

Hi @Niko_Z,

In 1.x, symlink support worked such that Insync syncs the target of the symlink — on the cloud, it’s as if the target folder is directly in the location of the symlink. This behavior is similarly achieved by using the Local Selective Sync function on Insync 3 (found on the upper right of the app UI). Could you let me know if the Local Selective Sync addresses this workflow?

#26

Hello,

Thank you for your reply. It is not quite the same, the advantage of the symlink sync is greater flexibility regarding folder and file placement. Local Selective Sync cannot quote replicate this behavior, as it syncs folders and files according to their original location.

It is usable, but it does not replicate the full functionality, especially for users that work across multiple workstations, and across different operating systems.

May I know whether the feature was abandoned due to technical reasons, or was it a design decision?

#27

Hi. While I’m suffering this problem, the reason is due to Emacs temporary files - when a file is being modified it creates a temporary of the format

lrwxrwxrwx.  1 rnc rnc       31 Jan 19 16:03 .#test.txt -> rnc@atlantis.1857977:1610961983

What would be useful is an option to either ignore symlinks or to ignore temporary files of certain formats?

#28

Hi @rnc,

If the file starts with a # then you can enter this on the ignore list: \#* (backslash before the # and an asterisk after). Let me know if that doesn’t work.

#29

Hi @Niko_Z!

I’ve reached out to our engineers to get further insight on this-- will update you! :slight_smile:

#31

Oh neat ; I’d forgotten about that. I used

.\#*

which works nicely!

Thanks very much. Emacs is happy again :slight_smile:

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