Use Cases

You can perform all use cases simultaneously by including all the settings you need in one config file.

1. Sync Local to Remotes

Watch and sync directories from a local machine to remote servers. This is useful for software development that needs to sync code and other files with a remote server for live testing. It can also be used for live remote backups.

jp-sync.json

[
  {
    "watch": ["/home/user/project1", "/home/user/project2"],
    "rsync": {
      "locations": ["username1@fqdn1:/var/www", "username2@fqdn2:/var/www"]
    }
  }, {
    "watch": ["/home/user/project3"],
    "rsync": {
      "locations": ["username3@fqdn3:/home/user"]
    }
  }
]

2. Cloud Sync

Create an efficient decentralised, replicated, fault tolerant cloud that keeps data in specified directories consistent with each other on a specified set of servers.

jp-sync.json

[
  {
    "watch": ["/etc/nginx/conf.d"],
    "cloud": {
      "serversEnvVar": "SERVERS",
      "username": "root"
    },
    "postSyncCmd": "service nginx restart"
  }, {
    "watch": ["/home/user/project1"],
    "cloud": {
      "serversEnvVar": "SERVERS",
      "username": "root"
    },
    "postSyncCmd": "service project1.service restart"
  }
]

3. Live Local Backups

Backup to an external hard drive connected to your local machine.

jp-sync.json

[
  {
    "watch": ["test1"],
    "rsync": {
      "destinations": ["test2"],
    }
  }
]

Requirements

1. fswatch must be available on your system.

2. rsync must be installed on the local and remote machines with the relavant certificates configured so that it can sync to remote servers without asking for the password.

MacOS: $ brew install fswatch rsync

Ubuntu: $ sudo apt install fswatch rsync

Usage

1. Install:

   $ npm install --global @jdsp/sync

2. Create a config file, jp-sync.json, according to your use case listed above.

3. Start watching and syncing by executing this sync in the same directory as the config file:

   $ ls
   jp-sync.json
   $ jp-sync

You can specify your own config filename on the command line if you wish e.g.:

$ ls
my.json
$ jp-sync my.json

jp-sync.json

watch

An array of local directories to watch for syncing.

rsync locations

An array of rsync locations. The syntax of these is the same as that of an rsync destination i.e. fqdn1:path.

rsync params

Include any rsync parameters you like. By default the -r option is included to recursively sync directories.

cloud serversEnvVar

Add a comma separated list of servers to an environemnt variable e.g. SERVERS. To set this edit your /etc/environment file and add the line:

SERVERS=<fqdn1>,<fqdn2>,...

cloud username

This is the username that will be used to access all servers in serversEnvVar. It is equivalent to rsync <username>@<fqdn>:<path> ....

postSyncCmd

Enter a command line command to be executed after the rsync completes e.g.: service nginx restart