Notices

Hey all n900 lovers!

First of all i would like to say that im a Noob so this little "how to" comes with no guarrantee. But it worked allright for me I have looked for different solutions of sync folders on my n900 and windows 7, windows xp, and linux machines. Im sure there are many solutions for different needs but this was best for me. I think Unison is a very good program since you can modify the syncing process in detail, and the chance of destroying somthing is not that great as with other solutions..

A big thanks to all people who have contributed in different ways on blogs, forum etc to this.


This outline comes from different sources and i have installed it on a windows 7 64bit PC along with my n900 and it is SSH password enabled.

My n900 has PR1.2, OpenSSH server, titans Power kernel v37 installed.

On the n900:

First read through this post (wich we are in) http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=27426

grab this from bundyo to your n900: http://www.bundyo.org/maemo/unison/u...57-2_armel.deb

I installed it via xterm:

(you can learn more here: http://blaise.ca/blog/2010/05/06/how...oy-with-unison/)

I did not and I repeat I did NOT find any icon to start unison in app manager.

Start unison from xterm with simply typing:

You should get a GUI started where you follow instructions. A manual for Unison for further reading is here:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/u...57-manual.html

Here you can get some screenshoots and also how to use Putty with it. I did NOT use Putty:
http://www.minezone.org/wiki/MVance/FileSyncingHowTo

my settings were:
local directory (n900) /home/user/MyDocs/.documents

second directory (W7) c:\n900
filled in SHH
Hos= ip address tom my W7 PC
user left blank
I left out port = blank


I actually dont know (since im a Noob ) if setting up unison-gtk is required in this manner at N900 side, still i did this way.

Then start OpenSSH server on n900


On Windows 7 PC:

Unison binaries for windows was hard to find at least for me. And im not into compiling.
Via this thread (http://marc.info/?l=unison-users&m=120153269217850&w=2) I found a compiled version of Unison for windows who was the same version as for n900, so grab this version:

http://alan.petitepomme.net/projets/....27.57-Gtk.zip

then grab GTK runtime (as mentioned in same thread)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidg...b.exe/download

Install GTK runtime first.
Then unpack Unison-2.27.57-Gtk.zip
copy "Unison-2.27.57 Gtk+.exe" to runtime folder and make a shortcut to it on desktop.
Runtime folder should be somthing like C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin

Now you need SSH support. In my case to get Password for openSSH to work i did this:

First i tried ssh.exe(http://www.wischik.com/lu/programmer/unison-ssh.html) but this SSH.exe had not support for password.
But in the commentaries of the same page there was a solution.
I downloaded: ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/comp/security...ient-3.2.9.exe
and istalled. In the installation folder i took SSH2.exe and copied it to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin
and renamed it to ssh.exe

You might have to run this like they suggest once to sort keys out like this in Windows 7 open a cmd as administrator (ctrl+shift+enter) go to folder and execute the above. Mind to let traffic trough your firewall.

Now run Unison-GTK from desktop and you will have the same options as with n900
local directory: is on PC for me c:\n900
second directory: would be on n900 /home/user/MyDocs/.documents
host: the ip to your n900 (this will work over your local wifi net, via your GPRS distributor i dont know)
user:root
port: i left it blank
SSH is marked



When you run it there will be a black console in the background where tou type the password to your OpenSSH server on n900.
And voila! There you go synchronisations starts!

Im sure there are questions on various parts on this but im not the right guy to ask, but there are several people on this forum who have very good knowledge so if you want to change or modify these instructions feel completly free to do so in the benifit of other users.
I love my n900 and i hope you do too )

I just come to think of is there any easy way to compile unison in Windows? Could be useful if wanted to upgrade.

Edit: Have succesfully installed on two windows xp machines. I can now instantly update folders on all machines with new files, document edits, when closed work via n900 or on PC

hi,

anybody know if unison compiled version 2.32 available for n900?

thanks

update:
i found it at
http://fuuko.libferris.com/maemo/n900/repository/

Finally!

I was hoping for this application on my N900

Can somebody explain how unison works over ssh?

I have an always on ARM based NAS device with only rsync installed. I want this to be my master storage device to which everything else is synced. Problem is I'd have to compile unison on my NAS which is a real pain if unison needs to be on both the "host" and "client". So a possible solution was to use rsync only, with

rsync --rsh=ssh -aizuKL

both ways. Do you see any problems with this?

Any tips on compiling the current version of Unison for N900? Arch Linux skipped 2.38.x entirely, so I can't get matching versions between my laptop and N900.

check debian arm deb's. They won't install but I managed to run 2.32 by unpacking the deb in home and running the binary, maybe it works with newer versions. In windows, there is a problem with unicode in older versions but I used cygwin and all is fine. I seem to find best compatibility between distros with 2.32 though.

There is a problem with deleting files. Rsync deletes files in second root that do not exist in first root even if the file is new in the second root. If you don't care about deleting files (keep everything) it's fine I think.

unison works even without being installed in one of the machines but it requires another machine to have a server installation, which uses the unisonless machine as storage over ftp (IIRC) which can be tunnelled over ssh.

in normal mode it just ssh's to the other machine and runs the unison binary there communicating with it

Thanks qwazix. I had been waiting almost a year for a reply
I've been getting by with a rsync script but that problem did pop up quite a bit. I had to make sure I deleted files on both sides otherwise it would keep recreating it. I will take a look at installing unison on another machine. Thanks again for the advice.

oh, I hadn't noticed the date, I hadn't seen this thread before it popped in the active topics. As I am using unison pretty successfully for a month or two now on two ubuntu boxes the N900 and a W7 pc I thought I'd hop in.