From 23a56bd50b04211da3cab45f72c3390711b2416b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mitja Felicijan Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:35:08 +0200 Subject: Moved notes and posts into subfolders --- content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md | 112 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 112 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md (limited to 'content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md') diff --git a/content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md b/content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e16b827 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2020-09-09-digitalocean-sync.md @@ -0,0 +1,112 @@ +--- +title: Using Digitalocean Spaces to sync between computers +url: digitalocean-spaces-to-sync-between-computers.html +date: 2020-09-09T12:00:00+02:00 +type: post +draft: false +--- + +I've been using [Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/) for probably **10+ years** +now and I-ve became so used to it that it runs in the background that I don't +even imagine a world without it. But it's not without problems. + +At first I had problems with `.venv` environments for Python and the only +solution for excluding synchronization for this folder was to manually exclude a +specific folder which is not really scalable. FYI, my whole project folder is +synced on [Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/). This of course introduced a lot +of syncing of files and folders that are not needed or even break things on +other machines. In the case of **Python**, I couldn't use that on my second +machine. I needed to delete `.venv` folder and pip it again which synced files +again to the main machine. This was very frustrating. **Nodejs** handles this +much nicer and I can just run the scripts without deleting `node_modules` again +and reinstalling. However, `node_modules` is a beast of its own. It creates so +many files that OS has a problem counting them when you check the folder +contents for size. + +I wanted something similar to Dropbox. I could without the instant syncing but +it would need to be fast and had the option for me to exclude folders like +`node_modules, .venv, .git` and folders like that. + +I went on a hunt for an alternative to [Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/) +and found: + +- [Tresorit](https://tresorit.com/) +- [Sync.com](https://sync.com) +- [Box](https://www.box.com/) + +You know, the usual list of suspects. I didn't include [Google +drive](https://drive.google.com) or [One drive](https://onedrive.live.com/) +since they are even more draconian than Dropbox. + +> All this does not stem from me being paranoid but recently these companies +> have became more and more aggressive and they keep violating our privacy when +> they share our data with 3rd party services. It is getting out of control. + +So, my main problem was still there. No way of excluding a specific folder from +syncing. And before we go into "*But you have git, isn't that enough?*", I must +say, that many of the files (PDFs, spreadsheets, etc) I have in a `git` repo +don't get pushed upstream to Git and I still want to have them synced across my +computers. + +I initially wanted to use [rsync](https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync) but I would +need to then have a remote VPS or transfer between my computers directly. I +wanted a solution where all my files could be accessible to me without my +machine. + +> **WARNING: This solution will cost you money!** DigitalOcean Spaces are $5 per +month and there are some bandwidth limitations and if you go beyond that you get +billed additionally. + +Then I remembered that I could use something like +[S3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_S3) since it has versioning and is +fully managed. I didn't want to go down the AWS rabbit hole with this so I +choose [DigitalOcean Spaces](https://www.digitalocean.com/products/spaces/). + +Then I needed a command-line tool to sync between source and target. I found +this nice tool [s3cmd](https://s3tools.org/s3cmd) and it is in the Ubuntu +repositories. + +```bash +sudo apt install s3cmd +``` + +After installation will I create a new Space bucket on DigitalOcean. Remember +the zone you will choose because you will need it when you will configure +`s3cmd`. + +Then I visited [Digitalocean Applications & +API](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/api/tokens) and generated **Spaces +access keys**. Save both key and secret somewhere safe because when you will +leave the page secret will not be available anymore to you and you will need to +re-generate it. + +```bash +# enter your key and secret and correct endpoint +# my endpoint is ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com because +# I created my bucket in Amsterdam regiin +s3cmd --configure +``` + +After that I played around with options for `s3cmd` and got to the following +command. + +```bash +# I executed this command from my projects folder +cd projects +s3cmd sync --delete-removed --exclude 'node_modules/*' --exclude '.git/*' --exclude '.venv/*' ./ s3://my-bucket-name/projects/ +``` + +When syncing int he other direction you will need to change the order of the +`SOURCE` and `TARGET` to `s3://my-bucket-name/projects/` and `./`. + +> Be sure that all the paths have trailing slash so that sync knows that this +> are directories. + +I am planning to implement some sort of a `.ignore` file that will enable me to +have a project-specific exclude options. + +I am currently running this every hour as a cronjob which is perfectly fine for +now when I am testing how this whole thing works and how it all will turn out. + +I have also created a small Gnome extension which is still very unstable, but +when/if this whole experiment pays of I will share on Github. -- cgit v1.2.3