Keep Remote Directory Up-to-date

Question

I absolutely love the Keep Remote Directory Up-to-date feature in Winscp. Unfortunately, I can\'t find anything as simple to use in OS X or Linux. I know the same thing can

Answer 1

I have the same issue. I loved winscp "keep remote directory up to date" command. However, in my quest to rid myself of Windows, I lost winscp. I did write a script that uses fileschanged and rsync to do something similar much closer to real time.

How to use:

• Make sure you have fileschanged installed
• Save this script in /usr/local/bin/livesync or somewhere reachable in your $PATH and make it executable
• Use Nautilus to connect to the remote host (sftp or ftp)
• Run this script by doing livesync SOURCE DEST
• The DEST directory will be in /home/[username]/.gvfs/[path to ftp scp or whatever]

A Couple downsides:

• It is slower than winscp (my guess is because it goes through Nautilus and has to detect changes through rsync as well)
• You have to manually create the destination directory if it doesn't already exist. So if you're adding a directory, it won't detect and create the directory on the DEST side.
• Probably more that I haven't noticed yet
• Also, do not attempt to synchronize a SRC directory named "rsyncThis". That will probably not be good :)

---

#!/bin/sh

upload_files()
{
    if [ "$HOMEDIR" = "." ]
    then
        HOMEDIR=`pwd`
    fi

    while read  input
    do
        SYNCFILE=${input#$HOMEDIR}
        echo -n "Sync File: $SYNCFILE..."
        rsync -Cvz --temp-dir="$REMOTEDIR" "$HOMEDIR/$SYNCFILE" "$REMOTEDIR/$SYNCFILE" > /dev/null
        echo "Done."
    done
}


help()
{
    echo "Live rsync copy from one directory to another.  This will overwrite the existing files on DEST."
    echo "Usage: $0 SOURCE DEST"    
}


case "$1" in
  rsyncThis)
    HOMEDIR=$2
    REMOTEDIR=$3
    echo "HOMEDIR=$HOMEDIR"
    echo "REMOTEDIR=$REMOTEDIR"
    upload_files
    ;;

  help)
    help
    ;;

  *)
    if [ -n "$1" ] && [ -n "$2" ]
    then
        fileschanged -r "$1" | "$0" rsyncThis "$1" "$2"
    else
        help
    fi
    ;;
esac