Set up Syncthing on Linux host for multiple users

syncthing setup.md

Set Up SyncThing on Linux Host for Multiple Users

This covers setting up SyncThing on Ubunty/Debian

Install Syncthing

$ sudo apt-install syncthing

Enable Syncthing for Each User

Add a systemd file for each instance of syncthing.

sudo systemclt enable syncthing@alice
sudo systemctl enable syncting@bob

Start Syncthing for Each User

The ports must be configured manually. Starting the service will create all the necessary configuration files for the next step

sudo systemclt start syncthing@alice
sudo systemctl stop syncthing@alice
sudo systemctl start syncthing@bob
sudo systemctl stop syncthing@alice

Configure Syncthing For Each User

Set up each user's address ~/.config/syncthing/config.xml to match the following. Increment the port number (8384, 8385, 838n) for each user. Each user must have a unique port number. Use the address 0.0.0.0 to make the web gui accessible on the local network.

<gui enabled="true" tls="false" debugging="false">
    <address>0.0.0.0:8385</address>
    <apikey>abc123</apikey>
    <theme>default</theme>
</gui>

Set Up SyncThing on MacOS Host for Multiple Users

This covers setting up SyncThing for multiple users on MacOS

Install Syncthing

$ brew install syncthing

Enable syncthing for the current user by following the directions in homebrew.

Enable Syncthing for Each User

Copy /opt/Cellar/SyncThing/xx.yy.zz/homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist for each user.

Edit homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist and change the logging paths to /tmp/syncthing_username.log for each user

Configure Syncthing For Each User

Set up each user's address ~/Library/Application Support/Syncthing/config.xml to match the following. Increment the port number (8384, 8385, 838n) for each user. Each user must have a unique port number. Use the address 0.0.0.0 to make the web gui accessible on the local network.

<gui enabled="true" tls="false" debugging="false">
    <address>0.0.0.0:8385</address>
    <apikey>abc123</apikey>
    <theme>default</theme>
</gui>

As each user, load the homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist agent using launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist

Configure syncthing as needed from the GUI by browsing to https://localhost:PORTNUMBER

I was trying to play with the service arguments to be able to specify the username and guiport along with the service name. I didn't succeed yet, but I'm sharing my attempt here.

The aim is to be able to do systemctl start syncthing@bob,3318
and inside the service file we have:

[Service]
Environment="SvcUser=cut -d',' -f1 %i"
Environment="SvcPort=cut -d',' -f2 %i"
User=$SvcUser
ExecStart=/usr/bin/syncthing serve --no-browser --no-restart --logflags=0 --gui-address=0.0.0.0:$SvcPort

Of course Environment= does not run the cut command.

Any ideas?

This post over at SuperUser appears to address this. There are a couple of different options, but I haven't tried them out yet.