Folder Synchronization

[Justin Willmert]

I am looking for a utility that will allow me to synchronize folders 
between my laptop, and my server where my documents are stored. 
Currently I am NFS, but please allow me to elaborate why this is not my 
ideal solution.

For the first reason, my dad is a bit paranoid when it comes to security 
(I am only 15, so all equipment but my laptop are technically his).  He 
doesn't know about what I am doing to my server 99% of the time, but I'd 
like to be able to assure him that I am as secure as I can be. Therein 
lies my problem: I've had to open up 5 ports on my firewall (to only the 
internal network, so that's is a good thing) just to get NFS to work.

Second, I never have gotten NFS working 100%. I can transfer files and 
all that, but when I am shutting down my laptop, one of the messages I 
get is an error about not being able to connect to the lockd daemon. I 
tried locking down the ports (instead of the randomly chosen ones), but 
I don't think I did this quite right (not sure if it's client or server 
side). I've never really looked into the issue that hard, because I 
don't think it's causing me any problems because I'm the only one in the 
house that uses NFS (I'm the only one with a duel-boot with WinXP and FC4).

Along with the not 100% working idea, I've also have a mysterious bug 
that I've been unable to correct, and when I posted a message to this 
list, I got no replys, so since I know it has to do with my NFS, I'd 
like to get rid of that troubled dependency (often times causes my 
laptop to lock up).

Third, I travel to school with my laptop sometimes to work on projects 
there, where, if I bring my own computer I can have whatever programs I 
want compared to the school where I have no permissions to do anything. 
I am limited to working in Windows only or else I get some problems when 
my computer tries to connect to an NFS server that doesn't exist.

Now I'd like to go over what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for (in order of importance)...

    ...a synchronization scheme that integrates into the Linux file
    system automatically like samba or NFS does: I can mount the remote
    folder directly into my file system and the client and server are
    always in sync with each other (no need to run a synchronization
    program).

    ...a scheme that will not just rely on the server for the content:
    it will keep a local copy on the client, and once the daemon can
    successfully connect to the server again, will go ahead and update
    the server. In short, a local caching system.

    ...a daemon that only requires a single, locked down port to operate
    so I can lock down my firewall further.

    ...(maybe a bit of a stretch but) a system that can do basic network
    recognition. For example: My home network consists of a
    192.168.2.0/24 subnet, and additionally the wireless's name is
    "ournet" (substituted actual name). If I connect to a wireless
    connection that is not "ournet", it won't even try connecting. If
    connect to a lan and the subnet is 172.40.0.0/16 instead of my home
    subnet (192.168.2.0/24), it won't even try connecting.

I'm really hoping someone out there has an answer for me. If there is 
absolutely nothing that matches my wishes, maybe there is something out 
there that comes close and is willing to listen to my ideas. I'm also a 
bit of a novice programmer. My brother wants me to code this myself, but 
I thought it'd be much easier ask you helpful people and see if anything 
already existed (I don't really want to reinvent wheels). If the project 
needs some help, I'd be willing to help coding a bit, but I am VERY new 
to Linux programming and tend to have unreliable working conditions (I'm 
subjective to my parent's whims and how much they will allow me to sit 
in front of my computer), but some help is better than none.

Thanks for any replies I get (which I'm hoping to be many :-D ),
Justin Willmert

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