Category: Linux

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Installing Syncthing on a Raspberry Pi

Installing Syncthing on a Raspberry Pi is a straightforward process that involves a few steps to get it up and running. Here’s a guide to help you install Syncthing on your Raspberry Pi:

  1. Update Your System
    Before installing any new software, it’s a good practice to update your system. Open a terminal and run the following commands:
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
  2. Add the Syncthing Repository
    Syncthing isn’t available directly from the default Raspberry Pi OS repositories, so you’ll need to add the Syncthing repository. First, download release PGP keys:
    curl -s -o syncthing-release-key.asc https://syncthing.net/release-key.txt
  3. Add it to a keyring:
    sudo mv syncthing-release-key.asc /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/
  4. Add the Syncthing repository to your sources list:
    echo "deb https://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list
  5. Install Syncthing
    Now that the repository is added, update your package lists and install Syncthing:
    sudo apt install syncthing
  6. Configure Syncthing to Run Automatically
    Syncthing can be configured to start automatically for your user. Use systemctl to enable and start the Syncthing service. Replace pi with your username if you are not using the default Raspberry Pi OS user:
    systsudo systemctl enable syncthing@pi.service
    sudo systemctl start syncthing@pi.service
  7. Accessing Syncthing
    By default, Syncthing runs on port 8384. You can access it through a web browser at http://localhost:8384 if you are on the Raspberry Pi, or at http://<Raspberry-Pi-IP>:8384 from another computer on the same network.
  8. Adjust Firewall Settings (if necessary)
    If you have a firewall enabled on your Raspberry Pi, make sure to allow traffic on port 8384. This command can open the necessary port:
    sudo ufw allow 8384
  9. Update and Maintenance
    Syncthing will be updated along with your system packages whenever you run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade.

Now you should have Syncthing installed and running on your Raspberry Pi. You can start adding devices and sharing folders as per your requirements.

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Add favorite folders in Ubuntu

A standard Ubuntu installation with Gnome as the desktop has a starred locations option in the sidebar. That sounds like an obvious way of adding often used folders to favorites so that you can access them quickly and easily.

Unfortunately it turns out that the “starred” feature doesn’t always work as easily as you would hope. You might think you could simply right click on a folder and choose to star it from the context menu. But there is no such menu option. Some people have gotten adding stars to work by going to the list view, and right clicking on the column header to then add “Star” as a column. But even when I could add that column and see the star, I still couldn’t turn the star on for the folder that I wanted. It seems like this feature might work mainly for indexed locations.

Luckily there is another way of adding favorites or bookmarks to Gnome. Simply start dragging a folder towards the sidebar on the left. Now pay attention to a little button that appears which says “new bookmark”. If you drag the folder on top of that, it will now appear in the sidebar as a handy bookmark.

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Create new files by right-clicking on Ubuntu

I just learned a really helpful tip regarding Linux Ubuntu. I have been missing the possibility to quickly create new files by right-clicking on a folder. With this simple technique you can create all kinds of files quickly and easily. The steps are really simple:

  1. Open the program that can create the files that you need. For plain text files for example you can open Gedit (or “Text editor”).
  2. Save a file with the desired format and desired default name into the Home/Templates folder.
  3. Now you can simply right click anywhere on a folder and you have the ability to create those files.