AASync

© Copyright Robert Vasvari, 2005-2008.

Main Uses:


  • Offsite File Backup An offsite backup can give you peace of mind... your data will be secure no matter what happens on your local computer, disk crash, fire, etc... What do you need for this? simply an FTP or SFTP account on some remote host. No special software needed, all you need is a login and that is it! This is easy to come by these days, there are many internet based hosting services that either for free or for a few dollars monthly will give you an FTP or SFTP account with some amount of diskspace. Once you have this account, it is easy from that on...
  • Website maintenance - (local to remote sync to a UNIX webhost)
  • Monitoring changes on a remote site - (remote to local sync)

    • Example use for an FTP file backup:


    Let's say we have a folder with our VID (very important data) at c:\VID. We have an FTP account where the site admin has given us he following connection/login information:
    FTP Server (host): ftp.myserver.com
    Username: ftpuser
    Password: ftppass

    The first task is to define a Source->Destination(Target) folder pair, add some options to it, and save it as our sync definition. In this case the source folder is local, the destination is remote, so this is an LTR sync (see Folder Sync Concepts Click the New Sync Definition button, that gives you the options window. Your sync source will be c:\VID, just click the local browse button just to the right of the source path, navigate and select c:\VID, click OK. e are back to the Options window, the source path is now set. To set the destination folder, click the Remote Browse button to the right of the Destination path. This brings up the Remote Login Panel:



    On this panel, enter the protocol (FTP) , host (ftp.myserver.com), user (ftpuser), password (ftppass) and the full path of the remote folder if it is known already. If you copying the path of a remote folder from another app and it is a full URL (so it looks something like ftp://somehost/some/path), then copy the path portion of the url (/some/path) into the path field.
    Do not forget to properly set the protocol button because most hosts accept only one protocol, either FTP or SFTP. The port field is usually left empty, some servers deploy extra security by using non-standard ports. If you have been given such a port along with the connection info, enter it into the port field. Otherwise, leave it empty.

    If the remote path is not known, you can browse the remote system. Use the Browse button to browse and find the remote folder path *after* you properly set the protocol and all the host/user/pass data. AASync will login using this data and let you browse the filesystem of the remote host, even create a new folder.

    IMPORTANT! If you browse a host with a different checter encoding, you MUST set the encoding to that of the remote host before you start browsing. Otherwise, you may not see any contents of the remote host and browsing will fail.

    Once the path is set, click OK, and you are finished with the most important part: the source and destination are defined. Now, lets set various options. Leave the sync mode Automatic (details in Sync Options) For now, one of the folders must be local, as Remote-to-Remote sync is not yet operational. Set various options, then click "OK" to save the sync definition. At this point you are ready to run a sync operation. The bottom table shows all sync pairs that have been defined already. The Mode column shows the abbreviation of the sync mode (Auto, P1, P2, or 'M' for Mirror), the Type column shows the type of sync operation: L->L for Local-to-Local, L->R for Local-To-Remote and R->L for Remote-To-Local.

    REMOTE SYNC REQUIREMENTS

    ALL PROTOCOLS: Users must be authorized users on remote system.

    In order to have a RTL or LTR sync you must have a valid FTP or SFTP account on some host that is reachable to you through the internet.

    On the remote host:

    • FTP: ftpd must be running.
    • SFTP-SSH: sshd must be running, your client must be enabled to connect to it. AASync will automatically use both the shell access (if enabled) and the SFTP subsystem.

    AASync is a trademark of Robert Vasvari.

    Please send requests, suggestions and bug reports to: (@)