Sync with desktop-mounted NAS volume?

Questions & Suggestions
1

I guess I don’t understand syncing. Seems simple enough, but I can’t seem to get it to work.

With syncing on, I change an existing macro, from a keystroke that launches Safari, to launching Chrome. Works fine until I reboot, when the keystroke has returned to launching Safari.

What I have to do to get it to take, is turn off syncing; save as a new sync file, replacing the old one.

I thought that with sync on, changes would be recorded automatically. Obviously it’s reading the file from the NAS (which I keep mounted as a volume on my desktop) because on restart, there’s the macro with Safari selected. Equally obviously, it’s not writing the file when I make the change to Chrome.

So what am I failing to understand here?

2

Sounds like either a permission error (Keyboard Maestro is failing to write the sync file when it makes a change, or the sync file is not accessible when you make the change).

The sync file needs to be available and writable at all times. If you unmount your NAS box, then Keyboard Maestro cannot make the change, and then when it is remounted, the old file will be read.

The syncing is designed to work with a system like Dropbox, so if your setup works differently, it is unlikely to work.

3

Thanks, Peter. I’m aware that the NAS would have to be accessible to be written. (That’s why I stated twice that the volume was mounted at the time.) I can pretty much assure you that the NAS on my LAN works considerably differently than Dropbox: different protocols; WAN vs LAN and so on… but then every NAS on a LAN would be different from Dropbox, almost by definition, eh?

Well, at least that tells me that my understanding of how it -should- work was correct.

Since everyone has R/W permissions on the .kmsync file, that’s not it either.

I guess I’m not failing to understand anything, other than that “it’s broke” (at least for me) and I’ll have to figure out some other solution.

Thanks anyway, and Best wishes for the new year.

4

FWIW, I found a solution, by changing the target… sort of. My NAS is a Synology, and while creating and mounting volumes works fine for drag-n-drop file sharing between machines; holding my videos and iTunes, the Synology software also allows for a “local cloud” (a LAN cloud.) By placing the .kmsync file in that instead, the NAS can still be used… and successfully.

Thanks for the Dropbox suggestion: the local cloud idea sprang from that.

Doesn’t explain why locating the sync file on a NAS volume didn’t work, but at least I have a solution.

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5

Yes, I would assume if the NAS drive was mounted, that would be fine as well. No idea why it would not be.

6

Could it be that KM Engine starts at login before the drive is mounted?

7

That shouldn't make any difference since Keyboard Maestro Engine does not make changes to the macros, so unless you're launching the editor at login, and even then you wouldn't make changes until after the disk is mounted.

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