Realtime Sync sync on loop

Get help for specific problems
Posts: 2
Joined: 24 Dec 2018

butter200fly

Hi there

RealtimeSync and FFS are amazing tools, thank you! I have a problem:

On my windows desktop, I start realtime sync on login to check for folders on my desktop and laptop computer being available, and do a 2 way ffs sync (i invoke a ffs batch job file that also lives on my desktop pc) when they are both available

The problem i have is that, my understanding of how realtime sync works from your documentation is that, an OS triggering file/directory changes in the mirrored directories should trigger a sync (and you have a special case that handles triggers that the OS fires when its the FFS sync job itself that causes the triggers). My understanding of this is based on the realtime sync manual page: https://freefilesync.org/manual.php?topic=realtimesync, if I have understood the following correctly:
The command line usually starts a synchronization task using FreeFileSync which naturally leads to additional file change notifications. Therefore, the RealTimeSync change detection has to be deactivated to not go into an endless loop. On the other hand, it is not likely that changes (other than those from FreeFileSync) happen in first place since RealTimeSync runs the command line only after the user-specified idle time has passed. This makes sure the monitored folders are not in heavy use. In any case, files changed during the execution of FreeFileSync will be synchronized the next time FreeFileSync runs.
What actually happens for me is that, the sync job begins as soon as all dirs are available, and once it has finished, the delay time passes that is set in Realtime sync (10 seconds), and the sync begins again. This loop never stops, so it DOES go into an endless loop!

What i would like, and expected to happen, is that the sync job would only ever begin once the host OS of realtime sync is informed of changes in any of the folders (and not changes that FFS itself has just caused). I don't really mind why/when the intial sync happens (on dirs being available is fine) but subsequent syncs should only happen once a change in the dirs happens. In my case, i am in full control of all the dirs (i am the only person writing to them and none of them are root dirs etc) so I'm pretty sure nothing else is writing to them and triggering realtime sync. So what is?

I've tried running what your doc page suggests as the batch to run in order to see which folder is triggering the changes: `cmd /c echo %change_action% "%change_path%" & pause`, however this job DOES only run once, and it outputs `CHANGE %change_path%`

how can i get the behaviour I want, as my disks are very active when realtime sync is active and it causes various issues!

thanks
Posts: 2
Joined: 24 Dec 2018

butter200fly

I'm still stumped by this. Can anyone offer anything to explain the discrepancy i'm seeing?

thanks