Syncthing
As part of moving to a new FreeNAS box, I want to replicate data from the old (nas2, running FreeNAS 11.1 U7) to the new (nas3, running FreeNAS 11.3 U5) machine. During the initial phase nas2 will still be my primary storage location. Think of this as something like a burn-in to ensure that there are no dead-on-arrival components in the new box, esp. hard disks of course. This is planned to last for at least two months and I want all my data synchronized constantly.
Syncthing is a fantastic decentralized file synchronization utility, which functions in a manner similar to other cloud storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive, but is self-hosted and does not require a central server to operate. The 'Syncthing' plugin replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet. Syncthing lets you sync your files across multiple devices (including the support for Android smartphones). It primarily works through a web UI on Linux but also offers a GUI (to separately install). However, Syncthing does not utilize the cloud at all – it is a peer-to-peer file synchronization tool. Your data doesn’t go to a central server. . Discover other Syncthing devices on the same network and easily add them. Android 8, 9 and 10 support. Syncthing-Fork for Android is a wrapper for Syncthing that provides an Android UI instead of Syncthing's built-in Web UI. Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized.
The solution I laid my eyes on is Syncthing and I want to run it in a FreeNAS jail on both systems. On the new system the installation was smooth, but on nas2 it was not possible to even create a jail. It turned out to be a setting that had not been migrated from the original FreeNAS 9.3 installation, which had been the initial version of FreeNAS on nas2.
All that had to be done was fix the “Collection URL” setting in the jails configuration as shown below.
Syncthing Default Web Port
- Go to “Jails / Configuration”
- Switch to “Advanced Mode”
- Make sure that the URL contains “11.1” (was “9.3” before on my system)
The next step was to install Syncthing with pkg. The problem with FreeNAS 11.1 is that the underlying FreeBSD is no longer maintained (EOL) and therefore no package repository exists for this version. The workaround is to forcibly switch to an existing repository, even if it does not match the FreeBSD version. I am ok with that, as long as only applications and not OS tools are installed (you should carefully think, whether this is also ok for you!). To do this, issue the following command:
You will get a warning about different OS versions and need to confirm that you want to continue. Once this is complete, install Syncthing with
Syncthing Windows
You get the same warning as just before and need to confirm the installation.
Syncthing Download
From here, you can just continue with the normal process of setting thins up. A good starting point might be the following YouTube video.