How do I know where I am syncing?

I Have a Question
#1

Hi,

I’ve got a premium account and what seems like a silly question. I have a mix of different target storage providers (dropbox, google drive, and some webdav connections to my own Nextcloud storage).

On a Mac, I’ve right-clicked and set up various “Sync to odrive” jobs for different folders (for example, my “Desktop” folder). How can I come back some time later and recall where I chose to sync the various folders without hunting/pecking to find them on my different targets? This seems like it should be simple, but I’ve been unable to figure it out. I can easily see which folders I am syncing, I just can’t easily tell where the remote copy is sitting. Thanks for any tips.

#2

Hi @jasnerfamily,
You’re right, this is a gap. Sorry for the confusion.

The truth is we don’t currently have a good way to display what the “human-readable” remote path is. The reason for this is that we typically reference remote storage based on IDs rather than paths, unless it is a type of storage that is not object-based (like FTP). In short, odrive doesn’t look at remote items as “paths” but as objects. Unfortunately object IDs are not very useful to a human…

You can actually see this when you send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu. This will create a “current_odrive_status.txt” file in the root of your odrive folder. In there you will see a section called “Sync folders”. This is all of the folders you’ve set up. It will show the local path and the remote uri, which will likely be a string containing object IDs.

I’ll look into how we might be able to better expose the remote information.

#3

Thanks for the quick response, and glad I wasn’t missing something obvious. Yes, adding that visibility to the sync destination would be a very nice addition.

Other than that, I am really digging the product so far. It’s kind of mind-blowing to think of all the different ways it can be used to move data around. My ultimate goal is establishing a “set it and forget it” backup/archive solution for my wife who is apparently allergic to all other backup strategies I have tried to get her to use.

For now I may stick with doing odrive backups on a shorter interval than the default 24h rather than attempting to constantly sync. Would you be able to point me to any links on setting up a cron job to get more specific on days/times beyond what the conf.txt allows? I’ve seen the ability to use cron referenced and I poked around but could not find anything beyond manipulating “backupIntervalMinutes” in the conf file. I’m very familiar with cron jobs in general, just not sure how odrive wants to use it. Thanks again.

1 Like
#4

Hi @jasnerfamily,
Thanks for the feedback and kind words.

What type of scheduling would you like to do with backup? Our backup is pretty basic (on purpose), but that means it can be a bit restrictive if you want to meander outside the box.

I think what we could do to help with this is to expose a “Backup Now” command via the CLI. This would provide the ability to customize when you want backup to run via some simple scripting and then you could just set a very large interval so that it doesn’t get in the way.

If we can get something like that out relatively quick I could show you how to use it via a scheduled task/cron job. Do you think that would work for you?

#5

I hadn’t thought too deep about it yet, but maybe something like this…

Backup every 3 hours M-F
Backup twice a day on Sat/Sun

And now that I think about it, perhaps something that does a backup right at boot/powerup, as laptops are often offline with the lid shut and so the schedule may be hit and miss.

Not really sure. As a storage geek I like having options and flexibility, but I understand the need to not offer too many knobs and dials to most users.

-jason

p.s. I assume I can use the blacklist to say, exclude a specific subdirectory from being backed up (or synced) while backing up everything else in the parent dir?

#6

Hi @jasnerfamily,
Our next version (going through QA right now) will have the option of kicking off a backup via the CLI.

We can revisit this once its out, but here is how you would setup the cron jobs on a Mac for the schedule you suggested:

# Run every 3 hours, M-F
0 */3 * * 1-5 python "$(ls -d "$HOME/.odrive/bin/"*/ | tail -1)"\odrive.py backupnow

# Run twice a day (8am and 8pm) on Sat - Sun
0 9,20 * * 6-7 python "$(ls -d "$HOME/.odrive/bin/"*/ | tail -1)"\odrive.py backupnow

This is a little tougher, but we could probably set the interval to be something like 12 hours, so that, if it has been closed for more than 12 hours, it will immediately kick one off when it comes back up.

That is correct

#7

Hi @jasnerfamily,
We released a new version that supports the backupnow command: Desktop Release (02-11-2021) Win v.6879 / Mac v.6984