Network sync problem with Linux Mint 18

[Mike Austin]

I use FFS with Windows on my network - excellent. But using LinuxMint 18 (as a frustrated Linux newbie with 30 years of Microsoft experience), I run into problems with file permissions:

Cannot write modification time of "/run/user/1000/gvfs/sftp:host=192.168.1.43,user=maustin/home/maustin/Documents/chmod-grub.txt.ffs_tmp".

Error Code 95: Operation not supported [open]

I can copy back and forth across the network manually with no problems. I am using the latest version - FFS 8.9 x64. Is there some setting that I need to change?

[Mike Austin]

Does anybody successfully use FFS to synchronise across Linux platforms?

[Mike Austin]

OK, so the only work-around I can think of is to run FFS from both computers and ignore the fails. But feel free to respond .... anyone.

[Zenju]

TBD: Maybe FFS should ignore failure to set modification times to support syncing with devices that simply don't support it (like MTP). SFTP OTOH does support this in general but gvfs has a quality of implementation problem.

[Mike Austin]

Thanks for responding, Zenju. Yes, it would help if FFS had an option to ignore the setting of modification times. Is that likely to happen any time soon? The real solution, of course, would be for Linux stop changing file modification times when making a simple file copy - one of the many frustrations I am having when trying to make a move from Windows.

[Zenju]

Failure to set modification times will be treated as a warning instead of an error in the next FFS 9.0.

[linuxuser]

Cannot write modification time of "/run/user/1000/gvfs/sftp:host=192.168.1.43,user=maustin/home/maustin/Documents/chmod-grub.txt.ffs_tmp".

Error Code 95: Operation not supported [open]

This sounds like you don't have permission to write the file /run/user/1000/gvfs/sftp, and maybe anything in the folder?

Setting this up was tricky for me after decades of Windows experience. If you're using Samba, my solution may work for you. I sync my laptop with my desktop. I set up the server on the desktop. (You can also set up a server on the local machine, my laptop in this case, but it's not necessary for this purpose.)

I used smb.conf to set up a share inside my home folder on the remote machine. Then I created a syncshares folder inside my home folder on the local machine. I am running FFS on the local machine. I mount the shared folder on the remote machine to my syncshares folder or subfolder on the local machine, and then I can sync it with the actual corresponding folder on my local machine. This seems to be necessary, and you've probably done something like it already. The trick for me was to set the permissions on the share folder to RWX for the group and the folder, then to create the share definitions in smb.conf so that I had group folder permissions that would allow the creation of subfolders.

Below, I've got a sample smb.conf that may help you. I still have one thing that I can't figure out very well, and that is that when document files are copied from the remote machine to the local one, the file onership is set to the local user and group name, which doesn't really bother me, though it would be nice to preserve one of those, but I'm a little more bugged by the fact that the execute bit is set for user, group, and others on all the files transferred from the remote machine, even when none were set there.

My cifs command to mount the remote share within a home folder goes something like this:

sudo mount -t cifs "//SERVERIPADDR/Notes" "/home/localusername/syncshares/linux notes" -o user=localusername,uid=localusername,gid=homegroupusernameonserver,password=localuserpw,workgroup=workgroup


My server smb.conf is similar to this:

#======================= Global Settings =====================================
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
netbios name =  REMOTESERVERNAME
# server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field
server string = Remote

# grant access only to the hosts on the LAN, except the router
hosts allow = 192.168.1. EXCEPT 192.168.1.1

load printers = no
log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
# Put a capping on the size of the log files (in Kb).
max log size = 10000
name resolve order = bcast lmhosts host wins
dns proxy = no
security = user
min receivefile size = 16384
write cache size = 2097152
use sendfile = yes
; This is useful to stop a server's resources being exhausted by a large number of inactive connections
deadtime = 60
invalid users = root ;
getwd cache = yes



#============================ Share Definitions ==============================

[Notes]
   comment = Linux Notes
   path = /home/username/Documents/Linux Notes
   browsable = yes
   guest ok = no
   read only = no
   valid users = @homegroupusernameonserver
  
   force group = homegroupusernameonserver
   force directory mode = 2770
   create mask = 0660