Syncany User Guide

This is the user guide for Syncany, an open-source cloud storage and filesharing application with a strong focus on security.

This document is targeted at end-users. It describes how to use Syncany and how to configure it. For development and build instructions, please refer to the GitHub page or the project wiki.

Contents

• 1. What is Syncany?
  • 1.1. How do I use it?
  • 1.2. Who needs another sync tool?
  • 1.3. What Syncany is not!
  • 1.4. Example Use Cases
• 2. Installation
  • 2.1. Installation requirements
  • 2.2. Installing the latest release
  • 2.3. Installing the latest snapshot
  • 2.4. Installing from source
• 3. Getting Started
  • 3.1. Using the graphical user interface (GUI)
  • 3.2. Using the command line interface (CLI)
• 4. Concepts
  • 4.1. Abstraction for dumb storage through a minimal API
  • 4.2. Minimizing remote disk space through deduplication
  • 4.3. Privacy by design through client-side encryption
  • 4.4. Trace-based synchronization through vector clocks
  • 4.5. Differences and similarities to other tools
  • 4.6. Further Resources
• 5. Commands
  • 5.1. The sy command
  • 5.2. sy daemon: Start and stop the background process (daemon)
  • 5.3. sy init: Initializing a repository
  • 5.4. sy connect: Connecting to an existing repository
  • 5.5. sy status: Detect and display local changes
  • 5.6. sy up: Detect local changes and upload to repository
  • 5.7. sy ls-remote: Detect and display remote changes
  • 5.8. sy down: Retrieve and apply remote changes
  • 5.9. sy watch: Automatically synchronizes the local folder with the repo
  • 5.10. sy cleanup: Remove old versions from the local database and the repo
  • 5.11. sy restore: Restore older versions of files from the repository
  • 5.12. sy ls: Display current and historic local database
  • 5.13. sy genlink: Create a syncany:// link from an existing local folder
  • 5.14. sy plugin: List, install and remove storage backend plugins
• 6. Plugins
  • 6.1. About Plugins
  • 6.2. Storage Plugins
  • 6.3. Graphical User Interface Plugin
  • 6.4. Web Interface Plugins
• 7. Security
  • 7.1. Prologue
  • 7.2. Security Assumptions
  • 7.3. Security Concepts
  • 7.4. Attack Scenarios
  • 7.5. Syncany Server Communication
  • 7.6. Source Code
  • 7.7. Known Issues and Limitations
• 8. Configuration
  • 8.1. Folder-specific Configuration
  • 8.2. User-specific Configuration
  • 8.3. Keys and Certificates
• 9. FAQ
  • 9.1. General questions
  • 9.2. Technial and security questions
  • 9.3. Common errors
• 10. Appendix A: Manual Pages
  • 10.1. sy / syncany
  • 10.2. sy cleanup
  • 10.3. sy connect
  • 10.4. sy daemon
  • 10.5. sy down
  • 10.6. sy genlink
  • 10.7. sy init
  • 10.8. sy log
  • 10.9. sy ls-remote
  • 10.10. sy ls
  • 10.11. sy plugin
  • 10.12. sy restore
  • 10.13. sy status
  • 10.14. sy up
  • 10.15. sy update
  • 10.16. sy watch
• 11. Appendix B: Videos & Links
  • 11.1. Videos
  • 11.2. Links