Ubuntu64

In my last couple of articles I’ve written about how I might be in the market for a Mac at some point in time. That point has come and gone and I am now actively using Ubuntu on one of my laptops and OS X on my Girlie White MacBook.

My girlfriend gets my third laptop to herself now, but she still thinks I’m crazy. The fact is I can actually make use of both the Ubuntu and OS X laptop, neither of the computers will sit in the corner doing nothing.

For me to make use of two laptops efficiently I need to have some key data on both of my computers. The problem is that keeping two sets of data is very difficult if neither of the sets is just an archive and both sets are active, working data. Keeping track of which files I’ve changed and on which computer I changed them would quickly become a nightmare that might end up with some serious data loss. I need a software solution that will keep track of my data on both my Ubuntu and OS X installations securely and reliably.

Since I don’t ever work on both sets of data at exactly the same time I have no need to lock or protect files from writing on either system, that alone makes my needs a little easier to fulfill than the needs of some working environments.

After scouring the network I stumbled upon a program called Unison which looked like it could do everything that I wanted it to do. Currently Unison is not under active development but it’s still a program the warrants extensive praise in todays software world.

I stumbled a little bit at first on the installation - not because it was a complicated install, but because different versions of Unison don’t seem to talk to each other.

Ubuntu 64 Feisty gives you two versions of the Unison program to choose from, those are versions 2.13.16-6 and 2.9.1-7 and of course their respective GTK user interfaces. Make sure that you can install the same version of Unison on both of your systems so you can keep compatibility.

Due to the countless different hardware configurations that may be encountered I am not going to attempt to explain how to accomplish a connection between your machines on anything other than through your LOCAL Area Network. There are two basic requirements for Unison to be able to work - at least one of your computers must be capable of listening for an ssh connection (accomplished by installing the ssh package in Ubuntu) and you must have a valid login account on both machines.

In Ubuntu you will want to install the ssh package to make your synchronizations securely. Installing ssh is as easy as searching for ssh in your Synaptic Package Manager and installing it. To run ssh securely do the following:

sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.old

sudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

*** Don’t take securing your ssh install lightly, these are the basic security measures that you should take. The above configuration changes will restrict access to only those whom you specify and will not allow the superuser to login via ssh. If you’re not sure what or how powerful ssh is - open your terminal and type ls. You would see exactly the same output if you were logged into your machine remotely via ssh. ***

Now that ssh is installed, Unison will have a mechanism to talk to the other machine and you can proceed to the Synaptic Package Manager and install whatever version of Unison is available for both of your machines.

Once you have Unison installed you will need to configure Unison to access your other computer. You will find access to Unison under Applications/Internet.

When you’ve successfully installed Unison the only setup that’s required is the Synchronization Profiles. Root1 is the absolute path to the directory that you want to synchronize on the host machine. Root2 is a little more complicated because it includes the username and IP address of the target machine and the directory you want to synchronize all prefixed by the ssh command. Be careful with your paths while setting up Unison or this won’t work properly and might end up having sets of files all over the place.

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