SynkTanc Help

After downloading SynkTanc client program, you have 3 steps left to get it up and running.

1. Select a disk partition to store local SynkTanc data

2. Add an account

• Add an account on your private SynkTanc server or our public server.

3. Sync a bucket

• Click the "Sync this bucket" button to sync it with a local folder.

• Then you add some files into the bucket. They will be automatically synced with cloud platform.

4. (Optional) Create a bucket

• You can also create a bucket from a local folder.

5. Browse files on the cloud

• In some occasions, you want to modify files on the cloud directly without syncing them. SynkTanc client comes with a "cloud file browser" to meet this need. Click an unsynced bucket will open the cloud file browser.

1. Desktop Client Interface

• After you install desktop client, the User Interface (UI) will look like this. UI pane has manily 3 sections, User Details, Main Menu - Buckets,Favourites, Activities and Search, and at bottom Sync Folder option.

2. Web Portal Interface

• SynkTanc Web Portal is accessible directly through URL in any browser with latest version. It has Menu Pane and Main Area Pane. Menu Pane includes Files and Tools menus. At the top right corner of the window, there are Notifications, Log Out and User Profile options. At the bottom left, user can get Help, About and Client hyperlinks for related information.

Syncing With an Existing Folder

• Sometimes you already have a bucket on the SynkTanc server (shared by others, or uploaded from another computer). You can sync this bucket with an existing folder on your computer. The local folder must have the same name as the bucket. The files in the local folder will be merged with the files in the bucket. No file in the local folder or the bucket will be overwritten or lost. The merge will produce some conflict files if file contents are different in the local folder and the bucket.

• To sync a bucket with an existing folder, right click on the bucket in SynkTanc client's main window and click "Sync this bucket".

• In the pop-up dialog, click the "Sync with an existing folder" link.

• Then choose an existing folder to sync with this bucket.

Selective Sync Sub-folders

• Sometimes you already have a bucket on the SynkTanc server (shared by others, or uploaded from another computer). You can sync this bucket with an existing folder on your computer. The local folder must have the same name as the bucket. The files in the local folder will be merged with the files in the bucket. No file in the local folder or the bucket will be overwritten or lost. The merge will produce some conflict files if file contents are different in the local folder and the bucket.

• To sync a bucket with an existing folder, right click on the bucket in SynkTanc client's main window and click "Sync this bucket".

• In the pop-up dialog, click the "Sync with an existing folder" link.

• Then choose an existing folder to sync with this bucket.

Unsync and Resync Bucket

• When you no longer want to sync a local folder with a bucket, you can unsync it. After you unsync a bucket, changes to the local folder and files will not be uploaded, and changes in the bucket will not be downloaded. If you want to sync the bucket with the local folder again, you can use sync with existing folder feature.

• Sometimes there are internal errors in the client which blocks syncing. In these cases, it's usually helpful to "resync" the bucket. Resync means unsync and then immediately sync the bucket with the same folder. You can find this action in the pop-up menu of the client's main window.

Setting Sync Interval

• Usually SynkTanc client automatically detects changes on local folder and upload the changes to server. However, if the local folder is in a Windows network share drive, SynkTanc client cannot detect changes reliably. In this case, you can ask SynkTanc client to periodically checks for changes in the local folder. You can set the interval of this periodic sync. The interval is set in the unit of seconds.

Using Proxy in SynkTanc Client

• SynkTanc client supports 3 types of proxy servers: HTTP proxy, SOCKS5 proxy and system proxy settings.

• HTTP proxy and SOCKS5 proxy requires you to enter the proxy server's address and port. If you use system proxy settings, SynkTanc client reads proxy settings from the operating system. The operating system has some mechanisms to auto-detect proxy server information. So you don't have to manually enter proxy server address.

• To change proxy settings, click the SynkTanc icon in the system notification area. Choose "Settings" in the menu. In the pop-up settings dialog, you can change proxy settings in the "Network" tab.

File conflicts

• Once you and your friends sync a shared file bucket onto your computers, you may add, delete or edit files in the bucket together. Every change you make to the bucket would be automatically synced to others' computers..

• Sometimes you and your friends may edit the same file at the same time. Your changes may conflict with each other's. In this case, SynkTanc would keep the first version synced to the cloud unchanged, while rename the other version to a "conflict file". A conflict file's name ends with it's author's email address, plus the current time, e.g. test.txt (SFConflict name@example.com 2019-08-024-06-15-24).

Excluding files/folders from syncing

• Sometimes you don't want to sync some files or folders inside a bucket. To achieve this, create a synktanc-ignore.txt file in the root folder of a bucket. This special file specifies the files and folders that SynkTanc should not sync. Each line in a ignore.txt file specifies a pattern.

The following pattern format are supported:

1. A blank line matches no files.

2. A line starting with # serves as a comment.

3. SynkTanc supports wildcards in the pattern. For example, "foo/*" matches "foo/1" and "foo/hello". "foo/?" matches "foo/1" but not "foo/hello". Note that the wildcard character * recursively matches all the paths under a folder. For instance, "foo/*.html" matches "foo/a.html" and "foo/templates/b.html".

4. If the pattern ends with a slash, it would only match a folder. In other words, "foo/" will match a folder "foo" and paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link "foo".

5. If a pattern doesn't end with a slash or a wildcard, it would not match a folder. For example, "foo" can only match regular file "foo" or a symbolic link; while "foo/" and "foo*" match a folder and paths under it.

Example

# a regular file

test-file

# a dir

test-dir/

# wildcard *

test-star1/*

test-star2/*.html

# wildcard ?

test-qu1/?.html

test-qu2/?/

Notes

The synktanc-ignore.txt file only controls which files to exclude on the client side. You can still create a file from synktanc web interface that's excluded on the client. In this case,

• The created file will still be synced back to clients. But any later local changes to those files will be ignored.

• If the file is modified on synktanc, the new version will also be synced back to clients; If the file on the client is also modified, a conflict file will be generated on the client.

synktanc-ignore.txt only ignores files that are not synced yet. If a file is already synced, and some time later you add it to the ignore list, its existing versions won't be removed.

How to Use Encrypted Buckets

• SynkTanc provides client-side end-to-end data encryption. You can create encrypted buckets to use this feature. File contents in encrypted buckets are encrypted on client side. The encryption password is not stored on the server. So even the server administrator can't access your file contents.

When creating an encrypted bucket:

• If you create an encrypted bucket in the web app, the password is sent to the server. The server use this password to create the bucket. But it doesn't store the plain text password.

• If you create an encrypted bucket from a local folder with the desktop client (see file syncing), the password is not sent to the server.

When you access the encrypted bucket:

• If you use web app, you have to input the password to the server. The server will cache the password in encrypted format for 1 hour. It won't store the password on disk.

• If you use desktop client to sync the bucket, the password is not sent to the server. The client decrypt and encrypt file contents locally. The plain text password is not stored on the client disk too.

• iOS client supports client side encryption since version 2.1.6. Android client support it since version 2.1.0.

Note that encrypted bucket only encrypt the contents of the files, but not the folder and file names.

More technical details of encrypted bucket can be found at SynkTanc Manual.