Unison is a free, cross-platform utility that allows us to maintain two sets of file replicas (instances) on two different computers or on various disks of the same system. It updates both replicas of a distributed directory structure, in contrast to straightforward mirroring or backup programs. The conflicting updates are found and shown. Using either a direct socket link or tunneling over an encrypted ssh connection, Unison can connect any two computers that are online. It works well across sluggish links like PPP connections and is conservative with network bandwidth. Using a compression mechanism similar to rsync, transfers of minor updates to huge files are optimized. Other guides can be found here: How to install Rust in a Linux System and How to Install MongoDB on a Linux System and How to install Rust in a Linux System also How to install Gradle on Ubuntu again How to Install Apache OpenOffice on Ubuntu and How to install and configure Microsoft Teams on Ubuntu
Unsupported usage of Unison
Due to file permissions, USB sticks that are formatted as VFAT (FAT32 FAT16 etc.) do not work with unison. A work around could be by giving usbsync a try. You may also try running with the ‘-perms 0’ option or adding a line like “perms = 0” to your /.unison/*.prf file as a workaround.
Advantages of Unison
Comparing Unison to a variety of synchronization techniques like CVS, Coda, rsync, Intellisync, etc., there are a number of benefits. Numerous UNIX platforms can be synchronized with and run on Unison. For Unison to work, there are no kernel modifications, system access, or root privileges necessary. On the same machine, across a network, whether through ssh or a direct socket connection, Unison may synchronize changes to files and folders in both directions. The rsync protocol has a variant that optimizes transfers, making it perfect for slower links. Because it handles the copies with care and uses private structures, Unison has a clear and accurate specification and is resilient to failure.
Installation of Unision
There are two ways to get this done, using apt and using aptitude.
before using any of the method, make sure that you have updated the operating system with the command below:
apt update After updating the apt database, we can install unison with apt by performing the following command:
sudo apt -y install unison
Install unison Using aptitude
On Ubuntu, aptitude is typically not installed by default. Use the following command to install aptitude
sudo apt install aptitude
We can install unison using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install unison
As we know we already installed from method one so it says it’s already installed as shown above, if this was not true, we would have been able to easily install unison,
How To Uninstall unison on Ubuntu
We can run the following command to uninstall only the unison package:
sudo apt remove unison
Remove unison configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
To remove unison configurations, data, and all of their dependencies, execute the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge unisonSummary
We can install Union by following the series of commands stated above.