[Samba] Folder Sync for road warriors in a Samba 4.8.x setup?

[Gregory Sloop]

I assume the SMB/CIFS share is simply a place to hold the files for backup, not active sharing of the files, right?
[Because if they're all off on laptops for school, each child really isn't actively sharing files with anyone else on the share, in any practical way, correct?]

So, instead of worrying about centralizing files, focus on your real goal, backup.
[Unless I'm missing something here...]

And IMO, the hands-down best backup, and which will likely work very well for your distributed users is duplicati, and the target for backups would be something like Google drive. [Essentially, any time the laptops are active, they're probably connected to the internet somewhere.]

The only reason I pick Google drive is that it's free for small data-sets [<15GB or so, IIRC - including all your google data.]
Unless you're talking a lot of photos or video, this will work fine.

Go look at duplicati - it's very space and bandwidth efficient. And all data is [or can be] encrypted prior to push to the cloud provider, so you have zero trust in the back-end storage in terms of privacy.

---
I do similar things to what you're asking above, for myself for my own consulting practice. But I'm a bad procrastinator, and somewhat lazy, so sync'ing data is hit and miss. And at least a few times a year, I have a local copy that gets modified along with the one on the share. And then the sync nukes the oldest one, but since both contain changes, I lose the data in the one that gets overwritten.

I can't imagine some automated process handling students well - who are likely even less structured than I am. [Not that I'm the standard in meticulous syncing etc, I'm not. But I think I'm likely lots better than most HS and college age kids.]

[BTW, I use beyond compare for sync management.]

HTH

-Greg



VSCvs> Hi All,

VSCvs> I know this isn't really a Samba question per se but I'm looking for some
VSCvs> samba-related advice.. :)

VSCvs> I have a very small AD DC setup (5 users) and some end-users (read: 
VSCvs> teenargers) are now using laptops, which means they don't always have 
VSCvs> access to the network shares configured by GPO and Logon scripts from the
VSCvs> Samba servers when they take the laptop to school. (The Samba servers 
VSCvs> aren't our fileservers but the shares are hosts on RHEL7 hosts too).

VSCvs> What do people use to make files available offline for road 
VSCvs> warriors/students and sync them back to the fileservers when they come
VSCvs> home? Are there known gotchas, do's and dont's? I'd like to avoid using
VSCvs> OneDrive and GDrive. I am currently Wondering if Windows Folder Sync would
VSCvs> work in such a setup. The mobile users are all using Window 10 1803 x64
VSCvs> laptops.

VSCvs> Any ideas?

VSCvs> Many Thanks,

VSCvs> Vincent