Hi list
I’m looking for approaches to an automation task, but I can’t quite seem to see the forest for the trees.
I have 3 macs (an iMac and 2 MBPs) whose internal drives are mirrors of each other (they all have 1TB Fusion drives with the same 5 user accounts on them). They’re all running Yosemite 10.10.5.
The iMac of course always stays at home, but the other two often ‘go walkabout’. When they return and hook up to the LAN (typically by wifi; the iMac is connected by both Ethernet and Wifi), I want all three to get back into sync. There is no need for the two portables to sync when they are not on site. The sync does NOT have to be self-initiating; in fact, I prefer it to be user initiated in case there are reasons to delay syncing once rejoining the LAN.
There’s some limiting conditions. For reasons of both efficiency and privacy, the data should not leave the LAN, so iCloud, Dropbox, AWS and all similar remote ‘cloud’ services are ruled out.
Also, there should be no added expense in terms of hardware, and little or none in terms of software (I’ll make an exception for OS X Server s/w if that would help, but not having server admin experience I don’t know if it would?). I know that macs have rsync included, but again I’m not sure whether this is the right tool for the job or quite how I would set it up.
Certainly I do not want to be paying subscription fees to anyone for a task like this, so BitSync 2,0 and any other similar services are out (I tried the free BitSync 1.4 with good results at first, but it became unreliable).
Ideally, I’ll write any necessary code myself in AppleScript, Python, _javascript_, Cocoa or whatever is required, leveraging existing technologies and APIs. I’m reasonably proficient (though no expert) with all these languages and not unused to muddling my way through computer-related problems, so I’m not looking for any services or products, but rather an outline of a good scripting approach to take.
I imagine there must be some on this list that have figured out a way to script a few computers together to keep them syncd. I’d welcome your thoughts!
Best
Phil
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