vmfs-http-sync

This is a nodejs client/server application, that transfers filesystem events over the http protocol.

Why?

Have you ever wanted to use a virtual machine or a container for your development environment? Have you ever had problems with sharing directories and network file systems? Have you ever waited for a page to load 20 seconds instead of 1 just because you are using virtual machine share directory? Thats because lots of software is working much better on a local filesystem instead of network or virtual machine sharing. Some brief examples are rails WEBrick server used in lots of development environments and node watch utility used for filechange notifications.

How?

The client utilizes the great chokidar library, for normalizing filesystem events on a different operation systems and sends them to the server, which moves the change to the local copy of the filesystem. Be informed that transfered events don't have changed data, so the server needs access to the actual changed files through file sharing service or network filesystem mount point.

Getting started

We don't have npm module yet. It is in my TODO list, but for now you will have to clone this repository and install it from the code. First you need to install the module on both server and client machines using:

git clone https://github.com/elsix/vmfs-http-sync.git
cd vmfs-http-sync/ && npm install

Or installing it globally with sudo npm install -g on both client and server machines.

After that you need to start the server with something like:

vmfs-http-sync server --server 0.0.0.0 --port 50080 --sharedDir /mnt/hgfs/repos --destDir /home/myuser/repos_local/ --logLevel info

and start the client with something like:

vmfs-http-sync watcher --server <server-address> --port 50080 --sharedDir $HOME/repos --logLevel info

And after a few seconds you must have a perfectly syncronized local copy of your $HOME/repos into /home/myuser/repos_local/ on your remote server.

Usage

Usage:  vmfs-http-sync  <mode> [options]

<mode>: Mode in which script will be executed. Options are server or watcher.
Server mode means, it will accept filesystem events over http.
Watcher mode means, it will monitor the given directory and will send events to
the server.

Options:
  -s, --server  In server mode it is the listening address of the server.
                In watcher mode it is the IP address of the remote
                vmfs-http-sync server.
  -p, --port    In server it is the listening port of the server.
                In watcher mode it is the port of the remote vmfs-http-sync
                server.
  --sharedDir   In server mode it is a local mount point of the shared directory
                from which files will be copied.
                In watcher mode it is a local mount point of the shared storage
                in which we are listening for events.
  --destDir     In server mode it is destination directory that needs to stay in
                sync.
                In watcher mode does noting
  --logLevel    Just sets the log level.
                Its default value is info and you should be OK if you are not
                troubleshooting anything. For more extensive logging you can use
                debug log level.                               [default: "info"]
  --retries     In server mode this set how many times server will try to sync
                file between the shared directory and the local copy.
                It is useful if you are changing a single file too, this option
                will make the server to wait till writing is complete.
                Its default value is 1 and it works great for us till now, but
                it depends on your use cases.                       [default: 1]
  -h, --help    Show help                                              [boolean]

Licence

vmfs-http-sync is licensed under the MIT License.