Syncing Home Folder

[thewhitehart]

I would like to gather some opinions on what is the best way to sync two home folders between an intel imac and a G4 ibook. I want to sync things like my Documents, Pictures, iTunes and iPhoto etc., but I'm a little leary about syncing the Library folder as I have different apps on each computer, and I wouldn't want to screw up preferences on either computer. Is there any harm in syncing the ~/Library folder between two computers with different apps and settings?

 

[yellow]

Well, if there's no app that requires what gets sync'd, there the info will never be accessed, so there's no harm at all. The "harm" (and I use the term loosely) may come with apps that you use but want to keep separate. For example, if you use Mail on both computer but have different data, trying to sync them (/Library/Mail/) will cause massive problems as mailboxes will be overwriten and data will be lost.

As for what to use... not sure I can suggest much as I don't use that functionality.

Here's a place to start:

http://www.macupdate.com/search.php?keywords=sync&os=macosx&button.x=0&button.y=0

This looks promising, as I know rsync is a longtime feature of Darwin.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20983

 

[thewhitehart]

For example, if you use Mail on both computer but have different data, trying to sync them (/Library/Mail/) will cause massive problems as mailboxes will be overwriten and data will be lost.

You're right... I tried this program called Synk, which seems like a nice program, but I did exactly what you said with the mail folder 🙂