Synchronization of Files

[simeon_mattes]

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Hi,

I'm looking for something in linux that is able to synchronize files. Actually I have 3 computers, 1 slackware and 2 windows 7. I want every change I make in either of these computer to be transferred to the other two automatically.

I have heard about git, but I'm not so sure if this is what I'm looking for.

Actually I want linux to be a kind of server, from which I can open the files. This machine will be responsible for every change that is taking place in the windows machines.

Thanks in advance

[Irithori]

Sounds like you want a samba server.
This will provide CIFShares, aka "Windows shares"

git is a revision control system, like cvs,subversion,mercury, etc.

[simeon_mattes]

Samba is for local Networks and moreover I can't synchronize my files remotely.

When I say 3 computers I mean that they are not in the same domain name on LAN. The connection is through internet

[sgosnell]

The quick and easy way to do that is with Dropbox. It's a server, designed for syncing files on multiple computers on any platform. Dropbox - Simplify your life

[lbman]

You might look at Unison (Google it -- I can't post links yet...). It is specifically for file synchronization, open source, and is cross platform. You are able to set up a cron job on linux and batch file that can be set to run in your task scheduler in Win7. It has a fairly easy to understand syntax, and good documentation.

Good luck.

[unlimitedscolobb]

I want every change I make in either of these computer to be transferred to the other two automatically.

I have heard about git, but I'm not so sure if this is what I'm looking for.

Depending on the nature of files you want to sync, Git may actually be helpful. If you have text files, you may be able to use a Git hosting to store the files online. Your server will have to regularly push updates to the storage, while the Windows machines will regularly pull updates from the storage.

[lbman]

A bit of a follow up:

I'm not sure that Git would be exactly what you're looking for. Git is a version control system. It's focus is for developing software and things like that where it is important to be able to roll back to previous versions of a file, branch from the main trunk to do specific development work, and to keep track of modifications (Who's doing them and when). It can be re-purposed into being a synchronization system, but it usually isn't advisable, because you end up with a lot more than is really necessary for just synchronization. If you're interested there was a project I saw once that had the idea of synchronization with git called Gibak. You can check it out, but it looks pretty dead (it hasn't been updated for over 2 years, to my knowledge...).

Unison on the other hand is exactly built for synchronization. It doesn't have a versioning system in the basic setup (though it can be configured to have a rudimentary system, if you want). Unison is able to synchronize across the internet by way of authentication protocols such as SSH, as is very careful of bandwidth. I use it to backup servers across the internet, and also to synchronize my own files between work machines and machines at home. It is very robust and works great.

If you are looking to have a server as a back of the files on your windows machine, then Samba may be the way that you want to do things, but you'll probably have to tunnel your samba connection trough ssh, in order to access your server across the internet.