How to share data across multiple machines

[Tommy Trussell]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Jonathan Kamens <jik at kamens.us> wrote:

> On 01/31/2014 08:38 AM, Yawar Amin wrote:
>
>> On 2014-01-31, at 6:43, Jonathan Kamens <jik at kamens.us> wrote:
>>
>>> Why won't there be a lock when Dropbox is used? As far as I can tell,
>>> the lock is just a file that GnuCash creates in the filesystem in the same
>>> directory as the data file when it starts up, so when it creates that file,
>>> shouldn't Dropbox automatically sync it to the other machine(s)?
>>>
>> If Dropbox replicates a lock file on a second machine, won't the GnuCash
>>  instance running on the second machine think that the lock belongs to _it_?
>>
> Not exactly. Here is my understanding of how things work (happy to be
> corrected if I've got it wrong!)...
>
> If you start GnuCash and it sees that the lock file already exists, you
> are offered four choices: Open Read-Only, Create New File, Open Anyway, and
> Quit. We can ignore Create New File and Quit since they don't help us run
> GnuCash in two places at the same time. ;-) That leaves Open Read-Only and
> Open Anyway.
>
> Let's say that you do Open Read-Only, which means that you now have two
> different GnuCash instances running, which we'll call RW and RO. In RW, you
> will be able to continue to modify your data, but in RO, you can only view
> it. If you want to see changes in RO that were made in RW, you need to do
> File | Revert.
>
> If, on the other hand, you do Open Anyway, then you'll now be able to
> modify your data in /both/ GnuCash instances. I suppose that theoretically,
> if you always, absolutely, positively remember to save changes in one
> instance, wait for it to sync (if you're using Dropbox), and then do File |
> Revert in the other instance before making changes there, this would work.
> But frankly it sounds really, incredibly dangerous and I wouldn't recommend
> it.
>
> I'm not certain, but I don't think GnuCash has any sort of conflict
> detection, i.e., if you have two instances running, make changes in both,
> and then save the changes in both, I don't think the second instance will
> complain that you've just overwritten changes you made in another instance.
>

GnuCash won't warn you in that instance, but DropBox SHOULD notice two
instances of the file being changed independently, and create a "Conflicted
Copy." https://www.dropbox.com/help/36/en

HOWEVER there's no straightforward way to merge the two copies (except
looking for the changes and entering the changes manually into whichever
version you choose).



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