Yes, I agree completely. I was just talking about a quick hack that works well for me, and would for the OP, not how we should expect everyone to do it.
1 Like
But you cant simply modify the /etc/hosts from any application.
Even if you manage to solve the security/authorizations, there would be a lot of validations required not to mess anything up, because there is hardly any file with more immediate impact
you don’t need to modify the /etc/hosts. The end user has to select the wifi which is the one the server is also connected to. Then the client checks via ping whether the server is really in that network if yes all is good.
I hadn’t seen the p2p thread which may well be the same thing.
and yes my post was predicated on server NOT being on same lan, if it were would not be an issue just due to lan speeds.
All I know is that I open is once with sudo nano /etc/hosts add my servers LAN IP and domain name and after I save that it works like a dream for me. YMMV
I would also like this feature.
As far as I understand it the way it works on DropBox is:
Client 1 uploads files to DropBox server (external to the LAN).
Client 2 connects to the DropBox server, see a file is there, but sees that it is also on Client 1 and grabs it from Client 1 as it is quicker than downloading from the server.
The file being on the server initially I think is to prevent conflicts.
I find this is most useful when you are adding a new client to the system. Rather than downloading GBs of data from a remote server, it grabs them relatively quickly over the LAN from an existing client.
LAN sync (in the way DropBox does it) is not an issue with a locally hosted OwnCloud server.
5 Likes
But this way you have have to remove/comment-out the line everytime you leave your internal network.
What I’ve been using for years is dnsmasq - it’s a caching dns server; you simply configure it to use your current dns servers upstream and add in a couple of manual entries for your domains. Then in order to have each client that connects via dhcp use your internal dns server, you simply set the dns server ip’s in your gateway/router to point to your dnsmasq instance; better yet if your running something like dd-wrt or pfSense you can install dnsmasq directly to the router.
1 Like
bingo.
not sure why everyone went off on a tangent but when server is on same lan this is not an issue,
this is for when server is on WAN like a dedicated/vps off of lan.
Yes, exactly. And, for example, when the Cloud server is out on the real internet (including e.g. hosted service). It would be very handy if multiple client computers “at home” can pick up a new (often big) file from the “at home” client that just created/modified it, rather than downloading it (a separate time for each “home client”) over and over.
2 Likes
I would like to add another (extending) use case:
I have a local Owncloud installation on my NAS, Raspi, Home-PC, that has access to all the terabytes of local disks laying around, maybe not always available. Then I have an Owncloud in the web (root-server, whatoever), always available, with a good connection (upload & download) but limited space, that serves all my phones/tables/PCs etc. with files/contacts/calender/etc. The home-Owncloud is hooked into the web-Owncloud via federation, to have everything accessible. In the Web-OC I can decide which data I want to have always available there (similar to the checkboxed-tree in the Windows-Client).
I don’t want to maintain to sources/client-folder in my sync-folder, one file, one URL, independent where it resides (this should be transparent to me as a user/application program). If the home-OC is not available obviously I cannot connect to the content, if I did not check the box to mirror it on the web-OC (which is included in a completely different User Story as well).
But if the home-OC is available, I would not like to load the file (e.g. a movie) from my disk through the home-OC to the web-OC (with limited upload bandwidth) and back again to my PC 3 meters away. The routing shoud find the local LAN shortcut.
(I guess this needs to be solved mainly as a proxy/routing issue. But I am not an expert in this. The Sabre guy who was on the OCC 2015 in Berlin might be knowledgeable enough with this topic to help.)
Take a look at UnionFS. You can mount your Home-ownCloud with dav2fs on the Cloud-Server (e.g. /mnt/webdav). Then you create a “proxy-folder” (e.g. /mnt/proxy) which has to have the same folder structure (in parts) as /mnt/webdav. You could use rsync or something like that to put files that should be cached into /mnt/proxy. Then you combine those two dirs into one dir (/mnt/union) with UnionFS. Finally you mount /mnt/union into ownCloud using externalStorage.
UnionFS automatically checks if a file is available in /mnt/proxy and uses this file. If it isn’t there, it uses the file in /mnt/webdav (from your home-owncloud). UnionFS will always prefer /mnt/proxy over /mnt/webdav. If your home-OwnCloud ist offline, the files in /mnt/proxy are still available (in the same ownCloud folder, because only /mnt/union is mounted inside owncloud).
You should definitely read the docs of UnionFS before doing this, but I think this solution could fit your needs quite well
2 Likes
Is there any chance we see local network sync in the near future as a regular NC feature?
1 Like
Not sure about Lan Sync, but feeling like I am the only one who has noticed or taken interest in GSOC 2017.
Maybe post some ideas there?
I wouldn’t call it Lan Sync, for me that is two Nextcloud servers and the call should be for server replication.
Its a standard split DNS where the lan subnet is a different IP & Server to the replicated cloud public IP & Server.
It would work transparently depending on where you connect.
I can not understand why anyone with a busy lan would chose to work on a remote repository when most of us are on asynchronous broadband connections when Gig+ synchronous ethernet is easily achievable on the lan.
You would have a local server and that would replicate out.
Personally unless I had multiple remote lans I wouldn’t bother, but if you did have multiple remote lans it could be worthwhile.
In my scenario I new work would be on the lan and have installed the server on the lan and access is through a static connection on the wrong end of a asynchronous broadband connection.
It doesn’t matter really though as remote work is the exception and the client app syncs local files, yeah its slower, but its the exception.
Unless you have multiple remote lan requirements I would be more likely to say you have installed Nextcloud in the wrong place.
If you want an example of lan sync, without even needing a central server, see syncthing. I wonder if the nextcloud people could combine forces with them in some way.
There is nobody at Nextcloud who is doing active client development (judging from github). The Nextcloud client is a rebrand of the ownCloud client, not more, not less. Recommend that you discuss those things with the people who actually work on the code. As far as I understand from github activities virtual file system (now called smart sync by many vendors in the space) is right now most in demand.
you can use syncthing on your server and use the folder in NC as external storage.
That’s right.
This LanSync-thing will be that one missing feature for beeing essential in every software-enviroment.
Is there anyway to use syncthing external storage in Nextcloud while still allowing files to be picked up by the Activity app?
Good question. In the settings of external storage you can set if the storage should be checked for changed files on each access. I’m not sure if this triggers the activity app (you could easily trigger an access via cronjob).
1 Like
Thanks the follow up. It would be great to have a better sync integration between both products, and I would like to break my existing Nextcloud apps as little as possible. Here is a recent thread asking about improving integration and here is a recent github issue as well.
Here is my feature wishlist:
- Hopefully adopt Syncthing as a fully supported method for Lan Sync between Nextcloud instances
- Allow Nextcloud apps to communicate with Syncthing apps as p2p, such as between mobile devices. No server available, no problem!
- Activity app picks up changes
- Nextcloud is able to track changes and additions of files without lulls.
- Total disk space in Nextcloud includes syncthing directories.