synchronization problems and challenges

[Eric S. Johansson]

Todd Slater wrote:

>> I am comfortable with using a central server to coordinate all of the
>> changes but unfortunately, I don't think unison can handle the number of
>> targets I'm talking about on the "client" end.  I would love to be
>> proven wrong.
> 
> Why not? Won't unison handle as many conf files as you want to throw
> at it? I would think the hardest part would be keeping the same
> version of unison on each machine. Maybe I'm missing something here,
> but I think unison is what you want.

thank you Todd for your kind reply.

maybe my knowledge of unison is limited (or warped by using it on 
Windows :-) but in thinking about the problem will more overnight, what 
I'm trying to do is given a union of all directories synchronized 
between machines, define for each machine a set of directories it wants 
synchronized was some other unknown set of machines.  If you have a 
common server, this is possible assuming only a single user between all 
machines for a given set of synchronized directories.

and other words, given directories A, B, C, D, E
and machines 1, 2, 3, 4

the common machine would hold reference copies of A, B, C, D, E.  Each 
of the machines, 1-4 would in turn synchronize their own directory sets 
against the reference copy.

individual machine sets:
1 {A,B}
2 {A,B,E}
3 {B,C}
4 {C,D,E}

in the implementation, if you can use a global reference file, then the 
list of what directories any machine synchronizes against can be updated 
on the next synchronization call.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm looking for.  That and a bit of insight as 
to why does my flash memory wake up with the wrong permissions.

---eric