Unison File Synchronizer

Unison project website.

Unison Manual.

Set Up

Downloaded GUI Universal Binary 2.23.12 "(2009.05.06, stable, should work on Tiger and Leopard)."

1. Installed on both Principia (King office) and houptlab.org (magnet.neuro.fsu.edu) by screen sharing...

2. Logged into Magnet as User, and launched Unison on Magnet.

3. On Magnet, under System Preferences, set Unison to run automatically on start-up on houpt log-in. (Will it be running even if I don't log in to magnet as user?)

4. On Principia, In the finder, made a new folder in home directory "/Users/houpt/uniDisk"

5. Ran Unison on Principia; created a new profile:

Profile name: "uniDisk"
First Root:File: "/Users/houpt/uniDisk" 
Second Root:Remote
Second Root:User:"houpt"
Second Root:Host:"houptlab.org"
Second Root:File:"uniDisk"

Save the profile.

(Apparently don't need to setup a profile on the server.)

(Profiles are stored as .prf files in "/Library/Application Support/Unison" folder; apparently only way to delete a profile is to trash the .prf file manually.)

6. To sync, run Unison, choose uniDisk profile, hit "Open". First time of launch will be prompted for password.

7. Hit "Go" for default synchronization.

And it just worked! (apparently don't need to create a profile on the remote host. Folder will be created on the server side on the first sync.)

If you close the profile window, you can't reopen the window except by quiting and relaunching Unison? Hit "restart" button to get back to list of profiles. Apparently no way to edit the profiles after creation.

Command Line

To synchronize the folder "/Users/houpt/uniDisk" from the command line (without invoking GUI app):

1. Make sure you are starting from directory "/Users/houpt" (maybe should use absolute paths in command line?))

2. type following command:

unison uniDisk ssh://houptlab.org/uniDisk -ui text

3. prompted for password

4. If there are any conflicts etc., will be prompted for directions. These can be suppressed with various command line options, for example:

-auto TRUE 

the user interface will not ask to confirm non-conflicts, but only ask questions about conflicts

-batch TRUE 

the user interface will ask no questions at all; non-conlficts will be propogated, conflicts will be skipped

-silent TRUE  

the textual interface will porint nothing at ell, except errors (automatically sets -batch TRUE)