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FTP folder sync app

Poff

Poff

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 16, 2003
1,258
1
Stavanger, Norway
I seem to remember seeing an app a little while ago, that would keep a folder of your choice synced with a folder on an ftp-server of your choice, but I was stupid enough not to bookmark the page back then. And now I can't find it.

Anyone know of such a program for Mac?

Thanks.
 
Wow! That's some advanced stuff! I thought there should be a simple 3rd party program somewhere aswell... :confused:

That stuff seemed way to advanced for me..
 
For an easier method, you can try these third-party apps:

Cyberduck - Freeware
Transmit - $30

Cyberduck will likely be enough for you, though I've found Transmit to be much more reliable if your folder contains a file structure and all files and folders within it must also mirror properly.
 
Heb1228 said:
For an easier method, you can try these third-party apps:

Cyberduck - Freeware
Transmit - $30

Cyberduck will likely be enough for you, though I've found Transmit to be much more reliable if your folder contains a file structure and all files and folders within it must also mirror properly.
Click to expand...

But will Cyberduck monitor a folder for changes, and then automatically sync those changes with my ftp-server? Or don't I have to do it manually? (I have Cyberduck, I've just never noticed such a feature..)
 
Poff said:
But will Cyberduck monitor a folder for changes, and then automatically sync those changes with my ftp-server? Or don't I have to do it manually? (I have Cyberduck, I've just never noticed such a feature..)
Click to expand...

Not that I am aware of, although I have not explored the full feature set of Cyberduck.
 
Actually I'm not sure either app will do what you're asking.

I did just find this: http://opbyte.it/grsync/

It claims to be a GUI for rsync. Perhaps it will be what you're looking for. I'm going to DL it and see what it is, but I'm on dial-up and it may take a few minutes.

EDIT: This looks a little more promising: RsyncX

Another possibility: FolderSync
Nevermind, that link is for a windows program, but there is supposed to be a Mac program with the same name out there somewhere, I just haven't found it yet. ->Here's the Mac version but still doesn't do automatic. I'm gonna look some more, sorry no help yet.
 
I believe I've found an option for you: AASync

I haven't tested it yet, but it appears to have the functionality you're looking for. It will do hourly updates. It does have a $19 license to use with a remote server, but a 20 day free demo is available.
 
Cromulent said:
Apparently I was wrong. After reading the Cyberduck website it does support synchronisation.
Click to expand...
I think the app he's looking for would have to support automatically scheduled synchronization, he wants it to happen without having to open the app and push the sync button. I can't find that option in Cyberduck, but it likely could be accomplished if someone knew Applescript.
 
Poff said:
I seem to remember seeing an app a little while ago, that would keep a folder of your choice synced with a folder on an ftp-server of your choice, but I was stupid enough not to bookmark the page back then. And now I can't find it.

Anyone know of such a program for Mac?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

CaptainFTP with its little addon Crowznest will monitor "hot folders" and automatically add changes to the FTP upload queue. Also has some nice built in "manual" scheduling mechanisms as well as spajillions other unique FTP features.

Captain FTP Website <<--seems the server is down this morning, here's the versiontracker link

Captain FTP on versiontracker
 
I couldn't get AAsync to work with my ftp server after playing with it for about 20 min. I'd say go with one of the two recommendations above.

Also, no one mentioned Chronosync is $30 and Captain FTP is $25.
 
Wow! Thanks a lot for all your suggestions!! :D

I'm currently testing out Foldersync. It works very well for me, and even deletes files on the FTP server when you delete them from your folder.

I wonder if it's compatible with AppleScript? That way you could have an AppleScript run every time you added, changed or deleted a file from the folder. (Active folders or whatever it's name is in english.)

I haven't gotten this to work quite yet, though, and I'm afraid it might not support AppleScript.. :/
 
Cyberduck sync

Here's the code i'm using to do this in Cyberduck (you'll need to put your server address, username and stuff in where it says):


my UIscript_check() --makes sure that UI scripting is enabled
set theServerAddress to "sever.domain.com"
set theUserName to "username"
set thePassword to "password"
tell application "Cyberduck"
activate
set theBrowser to make new browser
with timeout of 360 seconds
tell theBrowser
set the encoding to "UTF-8"
set show hidden to false
connect to theServerAddress as user theUserName with password thePassword
delay 2
if not (exists file "a folder") then create folder "make gallery"
delay 1
change folder to "a folder"
delay 1
tell application "Finder" to set fileList to name of (items of folder "make gallery" of desktop)
repeat
my galCheck() --actives Cyberduck's sychronize function
delay 45 -- waits 45 seconds before checking again
end repeat
end tell
end timeout
end tell

on galCheck() -- This currently uses UI scripting, but I'm working of figuring out the sync command
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Cyberduck"
activate
set frontmost to true
delay 0.3
keystroke "r" using command down --refresh file list
delay 2
my menu_click({"Cyberduck", "File", "Synchronize…"})
keystroke "a folder"
delay 0.2
click button "Choose" of sheet 1 of window "ftp:username@server.domain.com"
delay 0.5
click button "Continue" of sheet 1 of window "ftp:username@server.domain.com"
repeat while exists button "Stop" of tool bar 1 of window "ftp:username@server.domain.com"
delay 1
end repeat
end tell
end tell
end galCheck

-- I got this UIscript check function from someone else
on UIscript_check()
-- get the system version
set the hexData to system attribute "sysv"
set hexString to {}
repeat 4 times
set hexString to ((hexData mod 16) as string) & hexString
set hexData to hexData div 16
end repeat
set the OS_version to the hexString as string
if the OS_version is less than "1030" then
display dialog "This script requires the installation of Mac OS X 10.3 or higher." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 2
end if
-- check to see if assistive devices is enabled
tell application "System Events"
set UI_enabled to UI elements enabled
end tell
if UI_enabled is false then
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
display dialog "This script utilizes the built-in Graphic User Interface Scripting architecture of Mac OS X which is currently disabled." & return & return & "You can activate GUI Scripting by selecting the checkbox \"Enable access for assistive devices\" in the Universal Access preference pane." with icon 1 buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
end tell
end if
end UIscript_check
 
WinSCP

I didn't want to muck with rsync and none of the other solutions seemed to work well so I am just running WinSCP in CrossOver. It isn't an elegant solution, but it works well.
 
rsync

Just curious why you don't want to 'mess' with rsync. My guess is that if you would like a folder to stay synced, similarly to Dropbox, rsync is the best bet. With a simple cron job (which I'm sure we can help you with), you can have a folder automatically sync every n seconds/minutes/hours.

The beauty of rsync is that you have complete control over whether it syncs (a->b) or (a=b) or (b->a), AND it can check file hashes and only update sections of files that have changed. Result? Extremely fast, reliable synchronization.

Let me know if you're willing to give this a try as we can get you setup within a few minutes.
 
Hi all, @thewhall,

I was looking for a simple solution and CRON was the idea I wanted to take if no other solution were found.

I crawled, googled, and I found interesting stuff around FSEvents, the API in MacOS X 10.5+ that notify a directory (and subdir/subfile) change.

I found a Ruby script of 35 lines leveraging FSEvents AND rsync.
It does the job pretty well with a rsync/ssh server on the other side. But you can run almost what you want (including FTP) with this snipped of code.

URL is http://gist.github.com/149491

It runs like a charms on my laptop. I use it to monitor changes in a Eclipse project and push automatically updated file/dir to a test server. It is near than real time (less than doing a Alt-Tab + Cmd-R :) and it doesn't use to much ressources.

HTH,

Antoine
 
rsync use

I'm working on rsync. Please help fix my code based on this scenario. Remote server is smb://servername/NEWSROOMS$/Merlin/. Destination is a secondary internal hard drive called "Storage" in a folder called "Merlin." Thanks!
One more thing: the server will require username and password authentication to establish the connection.

rsync smb://servername/NEWSROOMS$/Merlin/ //Volumes/Storage/Merlin/

result:

ssh: Could not resolve hostname smb: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: unexplained error (code 255) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-40/rsync/io.c(452) [receiver=2.6.9]
 
I have been searching all day for this and the best solution appears to be this simple little script from a guy called Andrea Tagliasacchi:


image.png


http://sites.google.com/site/andreatagliasacchi/blog/osxautomaticsyncwithfolderactions
 
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