[FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination

[Raymond Parks]

Roger Critchlow wrote:
> unison has always been good to me when synchronizing between Windows and 
> Linux, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/, and I see it's 
> available for OSX, too.  But the problem is always getting a bit tired 
> of waiting for the synchronization to complete when I'm in a hurry, so I 
> don't do it.  I'm using rsync onto a usb laptop drive for some purposes 
> these days, but even then the time involved is a bit tiresome, and the 
> possibility of getting mis-synchronized (ie, overwriting a newer file by 
> accident) is present.

   I tried various synchronization schemes between my Powerbook and both 
Linux and Windows boxen.  My goal was to have a USB drive I could plug 
into any of my computers and start working.  I have never achieved that 
goal.

   One thing I found irritating was OS X', apparently deliberate, 
inability to write correctly to other file systems.  NTFS supports file 
creation, modification, POSIX change, and POSIX access date/time stamps, 
but every time I copied my home directory from OS X to an NTFS removable 
drive, all files had that date/time for all dates.  That made it 
impossible to use my Lacie drive as my home directory on all systems.

   As for Linux, OS X refused to interact with anything Linux without 
3rd party help.  I didn't have time to make it work.  I just checked and 
the Apple site has no information through search under support on linux 
file systems or Ext3.

   The whole area of synchronizing my work to make it available on 
multiple systems is one in which OS X has failed me.

-- 
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
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