Resilio Sync on Chromebook (Linux 'Crostini' container)

Using Resilio Sync on Chromebook (using the ‘Crostini’ Linux container)

Resilio Sync is available on Chromebook as an Android app (via the Google Play Store), which is great, but:

• for some reason, if I modify a synchronized file using a Linux application (running in the excellent Crostini Linux application container), the Resilio Sync app doesn’t seem to detect the change, and doesn’t propagate the changes to the other computers

• the Android app does not have all the features, such as easily visible logs, as provided by the ‘web browser’ interface which operates on Linux/Windows computers.

‘Resilio Sync’ for Linux can be operated inside a Chromebook ‘Crostini’ container!

Details on the how to ‘start’/use Crostini can be found elsewhere.

Starting Resilio Sync on Crostini’s ‘Debian’ container can be found on Resilio Sync’s help pages.

In summary

• Add Resilio Sync repository

echo "deb http://linux-packages.resilio.com/resilio-sync/deb resilio-sync non-free" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/resilio-sync.list

• Add Resilio Sync public key

curl -L https://linux-packages.resilio.com/resilio-sync/key.asc | sudo apt-key add

I myself used the instructions on Leon’s blog

wget -qO - https://linux-packages.resilio.com/resilio-sync/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

• Update the repositories

sudo apt-get update

• Install Resilio Sync

sudo apt-get install -y resilio-sync

• Ensure that Resilio Sync is auto-started (at least when a container is started)

sudo systemctl enable resilio-sync

Sync’s web-interface is immediately accessible with the Chromebook’s own ‘Chrome’ web-browser at https://127.0.0.1:8888 (with an invalid certificate).

By default, the ‘Sync’ service is started by the rslsync user. The rslsync user is created with a rslsync group. There will be a directory named /home/rslsync, which I think is the best place for synchronized files (which will have the owner rslsync.rslsync) to be placed. (The actual location of synchronized files is determined when adding synchronized directories with the web interface).

My ‘Crostini’ Linux user has a different name e.g. frieda.

How do I ensure that the ‘normal’ Linux user can read/write the synchronized files which are in directories which have the rslsync.rslsync owner?

The Sync help web-pages suggest adding the rslsync group to the frieda user etc. will help.

sudo usermod -aG frieda rslsync
sudo usermod -aG rslsync frieda
sudo chmod g+rw /home/rslsync

I didn’t find that was enough. What worked eventually for me was adding user permissions to the /home/rslsync folder

sudo setfacl -R -m "u:frieda:rwx" /home/rslsync