I’m looking for a way in Plasma to backup and sync my data from PC to a LAN Samba share on my NAS, using a GUI program.
The many sync apps (Grsync, Unison, Lucky, RealTime, Kup etc.) I’ve tried over many years, don’t let me set a remote/samba target. Most navigate locally only. I would mount the share, but nobody I’ve found knows of a GUI way to permanently mount it.
Everything else I need on Plasma has a GUI solution. Just a sync fails. I’d be grateful to hear of a GUI solution
Problem: I want to sync data from a Linux PC to a NAS Samba share. You do impose a constraint that a GUI should be available. I’ll bear that in mind.
If you can access it via scp (which is very likely, but you don’t mention the NAS model) then use rsync or similar - multiple GUIs are available and it sounds like you’ve found some already
It’s a Samba share, mount it and then sync data. GUIs are available for the sync bit. Depending on your distro a GUI may be available for the mounting thing. If you specify a mount in /etc/fstab then it is a permanent mount.
I suggest you break the problem down into two bits and solve those independently. The first one is data access ie via Samba and the second is the sync bit.
The shares are on a WD-MyCloud 4Tb off the shelf NAS. With setup page via a browser.
I’ve never found a GUI way to permanently mount a share. I hope someone develops one.
RcloneBrowser doesn’t achieve any more than Dolphin and is not designed for normal users. I’ll be trying smb4k again. But it has not been reliable in past attempts.
Backup needs to be something straight forward for non IT users. There are real benefits to all, if more people use Linux and increase the market share. More drivers and applications for example. I find it strange that this is missing from Plasma.
try Smb4K
Thanks. I already tried Smb4K. It finds the LAN shares and mounts them. But they are only mounted when Smb4K is running. I need them permanently mounted.
@ian @leopold
I believe you can add a mount in fstab with the nofail flag, so the pc still boots even if the share is not accessible//192.168.0.5/storage /mnt/data cifs guest,uid=myuser,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,noperm,nofail 0 0
Thanks. I’m sure that is technically possible. However I’m looking for an easy GUI way to do this for non IT specialists. Plasma fails badly here. Unless I’m missing a trick…
@ian
You only do it 1 time, then you can access it via dolphin.
Also, do you really need it mounted? You can always access your share in dolphin directly via network -> smb shares.
Another option is to add smb4k to autostart.
And to conclude, I don’t think any de specifically allows you to to that, so that’s not a kdes’ faultTyping magic spells is not something I want to explain to my kids. Bad usability is bad usability, even if they have to do it just once. Also it’s not always worked for me. Maybe I got just 1 letter wrong? That is the weakness with a hack. Some time ago I did autostart smb4k. But after a while it no longer mounted any shares. Also I suspect running an app just to mount the share seems like an iffy workaround. Does everyone do it? And no I don’t really want to mount the share at all. Yes I can already access it via Dolphin easily. But then I’d have to manually copy any new files and navigate to folders every time. More poor usability compared to 1 click in a sync app. I think Plasma is better than this.
Also it seems like this app allows windows shares as the remote location
Thanks. Yes Gnome is better for apps accessing the LAN. And Deja Dup does connect as I’d expect. But it creates special files that can’t be accessed on the LAN itself. Only via restore, that cant be used by other PCs or if you change your distro. So yes there is almost a way with Plasma. But if that is totally useless, it’s still a fail.
You’re right, there probably should be a GUI way to do this but the GUI is literally going to do exactly what you described as a ‘magic spell’. All GUIs in Linux just run commands like the one above in the background. Everything starts out as a command and sometimes people make a GUI that run it. Naturally not every command has a GUI yet.
Framing this as a hack or magic spell is the wrong way to think about it.
For what I use Linux for, Inkscape, Blender, web browser etc. do you think they send text commands from the GUI to another UI, the CLI? Sounds like an inefficient, legacy irrelevance to the user.
Remember this a usability issue, so for non IT users, incoherent text strings or commands are indeed magic spells. Any inappropriate UI is bad usability. They have put a lot of effort into usability on Plasma. So it’s quite a shame that they got this so wrong.
@ian
> Also I suspect running an app just to mount the share seems like an iffy workaround.There is always some process mounting the shares, be it graphical or not, even on windows
> And no I don’t really want to mount the share at all.
Ah, yes, then you can try freefilesync, it supports a bunch of clouds and ftp, smb, etc
There is also rcloneThere is always some process mounting the shares, be it graphical or not, even on windows
OK. Thanks. I thought the fstab entry looked a lot less involved, process wise.
Ah, yes, then you can try freefilesync, it supports a bunch of clouds and ftp, smb, etc There is also rclone
Freefile sync Files mode, can’t navigate to the LAN and Cloud mode only has SFTP, FTP and Google Drive. I tried anyway and it did not like it. Maybe there is a trick.
Rclone command line tool has a web GUI mode. I’ll try that next. Edit: No go. It seems the command line is needed to launch the rclone Web interface.
You should be able to access SMB shares in Dolphin by typing smb://[ip address] in the location bar. If needed you can also set default username and password in System Settings->Network->Settings->Windows Shares.
Also, you can make Smb4K start automatically with Plasma by adding it in System Settings -> Workspace -> Startup and Shutdown -> Autostart.
I’ve never really used SMB, so maybe there are better solutions.
Try Duplicati. I’m not sure if it supports smb but its worth a try.
Search “duplicati corruption”. You’ll find lots of stories of people finding out their backup repos are all corrupt.
I’ve never had a issue
Duplicati Thanks. I just tried it. It doesn’t list Samba under storage type. I tried it anyway and never managed to get it to work. It’s really designed for cloud services. It might be possible to make it work if I knew networking trickery. But I can’t do it.
That’s what I suspected but it was worth a shot.
Can you install Syncthing on your NAS? I’ve been using it with my Synology NAS to sync my music from my PC.
I set my PC to be read only for the share, so that nothing else on my network can accidentally overwrite anything.
Thanks but no. It’s an off the shelf NAS disk (WD My-Cloud 4TB) with setup access via a web page. Technically it might be possible, requiring an IT hack. But I’m looking for a user-centric way.
That’s a shame, it would have made things easier
