3 Steps to Use Unison to Sync Files on Linux Machines

If you have multiple Linux machines on your network, you may need to sync files across those machines so that everyone has the same information or so that everyone has access to the same files. Syncing files across machines can be an easy or hard task depending on what program you use and how you approach it. There are many different ways to sync files across Linux machines, but here are three of the most common and useful methods.

Install unison

Unison is a file synchronization tool that allows you to easily sync files and directories across your machines. It’s designed for people who have multiple Linux (or other Unix) computers in their home or office and want to keep the same files synchronized between them. Here are the steps required to install it

1. Download unison-2.40-i686-pc-Linux-gnu.tar.gz
2. Extract unison with tar -xvzf
3. Change directory to extract the folder
4. Run ./unison from inside the extracted folder,
5. then enter yes when prompted.
6. Once installed, run unison at least once by executing ./unison. From now on, running

7 ./unison should work without requiring any extra configuration.

Create an account in unison

In order to sync files from one location to another, you can use unison. Unison is a tool that will sync files, directories, and symbolic links across platforms using the following  steps

1) Configure directory paths for syncing

2) Run Unison command

Configure unison

First, create a directory where you want your sync folder. This is the folder where all files will be copied from and sent to other computers. You can name it anything you want or call it by its real file system location.

A list of machines with IP addresses: 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.10, 192.168.1.11

Second, type unison -config at the command line on any machine in order to configure unison for that machine using this config file

Lastly, type unison -monitor at the command line on any machine in order to monitor the changes happening in unison