The Magic of GoodSync from the Command Line

GUIs are for VSPs (very silly people)

In the past, I have extolled the virtues of GoodSync as a locally-hosted cloud storage alternative. GoodSync uses a secure and proprietary protocol to efficiently synchronize folders across devices and services. It is a very capable backup tool and is cost-effective compared to many cloud services in the long run. The software runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and its, shall we say “functional”, GUI (graphical user interface) suggests the program is geared more towards professional IT geeks (read: the interface is pretty ugly). But real IT geeks need not bother with the GUI at all, as GoodSync’s beauty is revealed through the command line.

For my own uses, I frequently have to run GoodSync jobs on demand. For example, a backup might need to be made immediately (between it’s scheduled run times). On any OS, GoodSync’s CLI (command line interface) is fairly uniform. Say, for example, I want to run a backup called, wait for it, “Mike’s Awesome Backup”. I’m not going to go over how to set up a sync in the first place here — this is well-covered in the manual and is easily configured via the aforementioned and ugly GUI. For PCs the command would look something like this:

"c:\Program Files\Siber Systems\Goodsync\gsync" sync "Mike's Awesome Backup"

For Macs, the command looks like this:

/Library/Application\ Support/GoodSync/gsync sync "Mike's Awesome Backup"

The magic is in the “gsync” command (the specific location of which might vary depending on your OS version, but from the above examples you should be able to extrapolate), which allows you to run any sync or backup pair created in the command line or in the GUI. With this command in hand, I can SSH or Telnet (yes, I know those are not real verbs) into the command prompt from anywhere I have an internet connection. With a program like Prompt or vSSH, I can save the command as a shortcut and quickly run it from my phone or tablet.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg as far as what GoodSync can do from the command line, but it is a powerful start. Please send me any questions.