Information Services

Title: FILR: Synchronizing only part of a Home Directory(I:)

Applies to: UofR Employees and staff

Section: Network

Owner: Team Lead, File & Print, Network & Communication Services

Last updated: Dec. 3, 2014

Introduction

This note describes the procedures to setup FILR desktop synchronization to only synchronize a part of your home directory.

MyFiles Explanation

Myfiles consists of two sub areas:

1. Your Home Directory which for almost everyone corresponds to your Novell I: drive.
2. Your personal storage. This is a separate area for files stored directly on the FILR server.

Why Synchronizing Your Whole Home(I:) Directory Can be Bad

Synchronizing all of your MyFiles is undesirable in a number of situations:

• you have confidential files or files protected by privacy law in your MyFiles area that you wouldn't on a laptop/PC in case it gets stolen. This could be mitigated by disk encryption software.
• You are storing Groupwise archives in your I: drive. These are typically large with a lot of files and frequent additions. Synchronizing down to your laptop/PC is usually not desired.
• You have large files you don't want synchronized due to limited network bandwidth and/or hard disk limitations on your laptop/PC .

Setup Synchronization.

• Login to the web interface at https://filr.uregina.ca , and in your My Files personal storage create a folder called PSSync(short for Personal Storage Sync). This will be the place you will put folders/files in your personal storage area that you want to be synchronized down to your laptop/PC with the desktop client.

• Look at your I: drive and figure out if you want to synchronize everything or just some folders. Make a list of what you want to synchronize.
• Now login to your laptop/PC and right click on the FILR icon   in the system tray and select Open FILR Console.
• In the Novell FILR Console window, select Synchronized Folders, on the left side. This will list the folders that are being synchronized. By default this is MyFiles, as well as Shared with Me files, which are files other users have shared with you. If My Files is present select it and click on the Remove button.
• Now click the Add button and in the Add Novell FILR Folders window click on the MyFiles icon at the top. Click on the download icon  beside the PSSync folder to select it for synchronization. The icon will change to a checkmark . If you want to synchronize your whole Home directory click on the download icon beside it, or to select subdirectories, click on Home to get a list of directory inside it. Click on the download icon  beside directories you wish to synchronize. Click OK to close the Add Novell FILR Folders window.
• click Apply to finalize the folder synchronization settings. Synchronization will proceed in the background.

Conclusion

Procedures for selecting only some directories in your MyFiles area are described.

References

Desktop Application for Windows Guide

Desktop Application for Mac Guide

Revision History

v0, 2014-12-03, Initial version