Hello. I am trying to find a better way to sync files and directories, namely mp3s between my computer and mp3 player. I want to find something that can tell me what differences there are in files between two sets of directories. for example, I want to give it /home/alan/mp3 and /mnt/iHP (mp3 player) as parameters, and have it give me something like this:


NOT in /home/alan/mp3 (compared to /mnt/iHP)
artist_a/song1.mp3
artist_a/sonn2.mp3
artist_b/song1.mp3
artist_c/song5.mp3
etc...

NOT in /mnt/iHP (compared to /home/alan/mp3)
artist_e/song2.mp3
artist_f/song4.mp3
etc....

This way, I can then copy the respective files from where they are to where they are not. Any advice!?!?!


-Alan (big_wierd_al@hotmail.com)

Hi.

You might want to look into 'rsync'.

For example:(make sure the trailing / is present in both paths) will copy anything in /home/alan/mp3/ to /mnt/iHP/ which isn't already there. Do the command with the arguments reversed as well, and you should end up will all the files from both directories, in both directories. If that made any sense at all.

Dave

Thanks for the help, i tried what you said, and it worked for the most part. Today I tried doing it mostly manually, comparing to directory lists with diff -y, and that does a very nice job of showing differences in two columns. I'll experiment and see. I was told about another syncing program called "unison". Thanks for the help

-Alan