When you say sync, what are you wanting to sync?

Passwords, keys, etc? Bitwarden (maybe with vaultwarden).

Going from memory, I think the app Immich is often talked about as a server for your own photos. I haven’t tried it yet.

Oh, nice combo of tools. May actually be a better approach than Resilio or Syncthing.

Syncthing.

Möbius on iOS, Syncthing on Mac/Linux, SyncTrayzor on Windows, Syncthing-Fork on Android.

Alternatively Resilio Sync.

I do find Resilio works better for iOS - it handles photos better due to iOS restrictions.

Oh, neat setup!

So, paid app (if you want wireless sync) - Media Monkey.

The Android app can read network shares and network media servers (I forget exactly what it can read). But it works best if you run the server app - then you can stream the library or sync media, similar to iTunes.

The Android app is free for basic functionality ($5 for wireless sync), the desktop/server app is free ($30 to enable wireless sync and a few other features). It’s been worth it for me. Even the free versions work very well.

I mean, yea, humanity gonna human.

But at least with fed, it’s very easy to setup another instance and federate as you choose.

It will always be a shit show (again, humanity), but won’t have a single (or even limited) central authority to censor as it chooses.

My concern will be it following the path of email - today many email providers simply block a lot, so if you’re a new domain it’s challenging to prevent getting on the block list.

Damn, 5 years from LTS? That’s impressive

Documentation has been mentioned already, what I’d add to that is planning.

Start with a list of high-level objectives, as in “Need a way to save notes, ideas, documents, between multiple systems, including mobile devices”.

Then break that down to high-level requirements such as “Implement Joplin, and a sync solution”.

Those high-level requirements then spawn system requirements, such as Joplin needs X disk space, user accounts, etc.

Each of those branches out to technical requirements, which are single-line, single-task descriptions (you can skip this, it’s a nice-to-have):

“Create folder Joplin on server A”

“Set folder permissions XYZ on Joplin folder”

Think of it all as a tree, starting from your objectives. If you document it like this first, you won’t go doing something as you build that you won’t remember why you’re doing it, or make decisions on the fly that conflict with other objectives.

Yep.

I have friends in the SMB space, one thing they do is a regular backup verification (quarterly). At that frequency, restoring even a few files (especially to a new VM), is very indicative, especially if it’s a large dataset (e.g. Quickbooks).

In Enterprise, we do all sorts of validation, depending on the system. Some is performed as part of Data Center operations, some is by IT (those are separate things), some by Business Unit management and their IT counterparts.

Performance may be an issue. It’s not specifically designed for streaming performance, and being a software VPN, it will depend a great deal on the devices used at each end.

Great summary!

Why Debian or Ubuntu? (I have my own thoughts, but it would be useful to show even high-level reasons why they’re preferred).

Re: Backup - Backblaze has a great writeup on backup approach today. I’m a fan of cloud being part of the mix (I use a combo of local replication and cloud, to mitigate different risks). Getting people to include backup from the start will help them long-term, so great you included it!

It’s up to the squatter to actually spend the time and money to sue though.

A C&D is a letter from a lawyer to stop or they’ll sue, it’s not a court order.

Yea, if you use Tailscale with Funnel, you get a secure connection with no config required by the web user.

Not seeing why you need WordPress.

The safest way I can see to make a secure connection across an untrusted network is to use a VPN of some sort, specifically a mesh network like Wireguard or Tailscale.

Tailscale has the advantage of being almost zero config, plus has the Serve and Funnel features which provide a mechanism to allow specific traffic into your Tailscale network.

Edit: Tailscale Serve is probably what I’d use.

After (ugh) 30 years of having PCs and many, many, drives, Seagate has been the worst.

But I’ve had WD fail too. Just not as much, and I’ve had far more WD drives. I currently have about 20 drives of varying ages, 98% of them are WD, because more of the Seagate drives have failed and been trashed.

And backup, proper backup.

My only issue with Grayjay (both Android and Windows app), is you have to manually export the videos out of Grayjay

If you try to grab the files directly, they don’t work.

Syncthing

Windows - Synctrayzor

Linux - Syncthing

Android - Syncthing-Fork

iOS - Möbius

“raw dogging the Internet”… I chuckled out loud