In place file updating

Help and Support
1

Hey RClone users… I’m looking for a syncing solution and hope this might be it!

I am trying to find a continuous file synchronization service that can be used to sync linux system configurations. For the most part, any service works for this (dropbox, google drive, box, etc etc). However, I have an issue so far for all the services I have tried. It occurs in the situation where I update file MYFILE.TXT on SYSTEM-A and MYFILE.TXT gets synced over to SYSTEM-B. The issue arrises on SYSTEM-B. All services I have looked at REPLACE MYFILE.TXT on SYSTEM-B instead of UPDATING MYFILE.TXT on SYSTEM-B. This has two consequences for my situation:

  1. File ownership and permissions get reset back to the default as if the file were created new. While I don’t expect a continuous syncing solution to preserve ownership/permissions across systems, I do need ownership/permissions to be preserved per system.

  2. Replacing a file breaks hard links (new inode is created with the new file).

    2.1 Yes, I know this can be solved by using a soft link/symlink. I personally use symlinks, but when a file is simply updated, a hard link should not be broken.

So, can anyone tell me if RClone REPLACES updated files or UPDATES updated files?

If RClone REPLACES updated files, is there any chance that UPDATING files could be implemented as a future feature? Furthermore, does anyone know of any services that UPDATE instead of REPLACE?

Thanks!

2

rclone doesn’t track ownership or permissions so I don’t think it has this problem. It may not be suitable for your use case though.

rclone does update files on storage systems that support it (eg drive), and on some storage systems (eg b2) you can keep all the old versions.