Legacy Selective Sync

Danger

Legacy Selective Sync has been deprecated in Resilio Active Everywhere 3.1.

Overview

With Selective Sync, Resilio Active Everywhere gives a flexible choice in downloading files on an agent. It lets selectively pick the files or subfolders that you need to sync right now, leaving all others as zero-sized placeholders until you need them. Once done with the downloaded files, you can revert them back to a placeholder releasing the storage.

Due to lack of integration with the file system, Selective Sync does not work for Linux agents and also for the Management Console Agent on Windows. Selective Sync works only for Windows and macOS agents and only for Synchronization Jobs.

The Selective Sync flow described below in "How it works" section becomes a legacy functionality and it's now improved with Transparent Selective Sync - Windows, introduced in v2.10, and Transparent Selective Sync - macOS, introduced in v2.11.

Common Use Cases

This is especially valuable for two good big reasons:

You don't have to wait till all the files in the queue above the necessary one get synced. Once the tree of placeholders is built, you can jump to the wanted file and get it synced right away.
It saves disk space on the computer. Placeholders do not take as much space as the file itself, and you can un-sync the file if you don't need it anymore. The file becomes a placeholder and free space increases.

Selective Sync Permissions Levels

Selective Sync has two permissions levels:

Read-Only
Read-Write

Disable Lazy Indexing

Selective Sync is incompatible with the lazy indexing feature. If you plan to use selective sync - please add lazy_indexing custom parameter into a job profile and set its value to false.

How to Enable Selective Sync

There are two ways to enable it:

1) When creating a Synchronization job, on the step of creating an RW or RO group.

2) When creating or editing a group:

How Does it Work?

Once a client gets Selective Sync access, a folder appears on it in accordance with Path Macros. Any files added to the same folder on other clients, appear on this one as .rsl~ placeholders:

To get a file downloaded right-click on it and pick "Sync to this device" menu (bulk selection is possible), or double click on a file. When a file is synced, the .rsl~ extension gets removed. Fully synced files are marked with a green checkmark.

Selective Sync stops working if a subdirectory in a path is renamed in the Management Console and some letters change their case.

Warning

At least one client with RW access to the folder and a copy of the requested files should be online. If there is no such client (Agent), the other Agents will have nowhere to download the files from!

Selective Sync Options

When the client no longer needs the file, it's possible to delete it locally. Right-click on the file or subfolder and select:

"Remove from this device"
Will remove only from this device (will NOT propagate deletion to other agents).
"Remove from all devices"
Will propagate deletion to other agents and delete the file there.

Alternatively, one can use the system's Delete menu:

Deleting the file will revert it to a placeholder.
Deleting a placeholder will delete the file from other agents.

All these options work for subfolders:

Select the whole subfolder to "Sync to this device" and all files inside it will be downloaded.
Later, if a source peer adds files in this subfolder, the files will be automatically downloaded.
To clear the subfolder, right-click on it and select "Remove from this device". All the files inside the folder will be cleared and the subfolder itself will also become a placeholder.

Important note: if you right-click on sub-folder-name.rlsc placeholder, it will just show the placeholder files inside. You need to right-click on the subfolder again and select "Sync to this device" to have all the files inside downloaded.

Agents on Windows and OS X register context menu items in the system when Selective Sync is enabled for them. This will bring the "Sync to this device", "Remove from this device" and "Remove from all devices" menu options into right-click context.
If those menu items don't show up despite enabled Selective Sync, see here for troubleshooting.

Note that Linux agents and the Management Server agent don't make use of Selective Sync.