Mirroring Solution - lsyncd

Prerequisites

• A computer running Rocky Linux
• A comfort level with modifying configuration files from the command-line
• Knowledge of how to use a command line editor (using vi here, but use your favorite editor)
• You will need root access or sudo privileges (using sudo -s from the start is a good idea)
• Public and Private SSH key pairs
• The EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repositories from Fedora
• You will need to be familiar with inotify, an event monitor interface
• Optional: familiarity with tail

Introduction

If you want to synchronize files and folders between computers automatically, lsyncd is a great option. However, you must configure everything from the command line.

It is a program worth learning for any system administrator.

The best description of lsyncd comes from its man page. Slightly paraphrased, lsyncd is a lightweight live mirror solution that is not hard to install. It does not require new file system or block devices and does not hamper local file system performance. In short, it mirrors files.

lsyncd watches a local directory tree's event monitor interface (inotify). It aggregates and combines events for a few seconds and spawns one (or more) process(es) to synchronize the changes. By default, this is rsync.

For this guide, you will call the system with the original files the "source", and the one you synchronize with the "target." Using lsyncd, you can completely mirror a server by carefully specifying the directories and files that you want to synchronize.

You will also want to set up Rocky Linux SSH Public Private Key Pairs for remote syncing. The examples here use SSH (port 22).

Installing lsyncd

Info

As of this date (Septemer 2025), Rocky Linux 10 with the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) enabled, does not include the lsyncd package. To use lsyncd on Rocky Linux 10, you will need to use the Installing lsyncd - source method. The RPM method is retained here, as it is likely that the EPEL will build this package for version 10 in the future. It never hurts to check to see if the package is available prior to building from source.

You can install lsyncd in two ways. Included are descriptions of each method. The RPM tends to lag behind the source packages by a little, but only by a little. The version installed by the RPM method at the time of this writing is 2.2.3-5, whereas the source code version is now 2.3.1. Choose the method you feel the most comfortable with.

Installing lsyncd - RPM method

The only thing you will need to install first is the EPEL software repository from Fedora. Do this with:

dnf install -y epel-release

Now install lsyncd along with any missing dependencies:

dnf install lsyncd

Set up the service to start on boot, but do not start it just yet:

systemctl enable lsyncd

Installing lsyncd - source method

Installing from the source is not difficult.

Install dependencies

You will need some dependencies for lsyncd and for building packages from the source. Install the "Development Tools" group:

dnf groupinstall 'Development Tools'

Enable the code ready builder repository:

dnf config-manager --enable crb

Install the needed dependencies:

dnf install lua lua-libs lua-devel cmake unzip wget rsync

Download lsyncd and build

Next, you need the source code:

wget https://github.com/axkibe/lsyncd/archive/master.zip

Decompress the master.zip file:

unzip master.zip

This creates a directory called "lsyncd-master". You need to change to this directory and create a directory called "build":

cd lsyncd-master

Then:

mkdir build

Change directories to access the build directory:

cd build

Run these commands:

cmake ..
make
make install

When completed, you will have the lsyncd binary installed and ready for use in /usr/local/bin

lsyncd systemd service

With the RPM install method, the systemd service will install for you, but if you install from the source, you need to create the systemd service. While you can start the binary without the systemd service, you want to ensure that it does start on boot. If not, a server reboot will stop your synchronization effort.

Creating the systemd service is not difficult and will save you time in the long run.

Create the lsyncd service file

You can create this file anywhere, even in your server's root directory. Once created, you can move it to the right location.

vi /root/lsyncd.service`

The contents of this file will be:

[Unit]
Description=Live Syncing (Mirror) Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Restart=always
Type=simple
Nice=19
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/lsyncd -nodaemon -pidfile /run/lsyncd.pid /etc/lsyncd.conf
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/lsyncd.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Install this file to the correct location:

install -Dm0644 /root/lsyncd.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/lsyncd.service

Finally, reload the systemctl daemon so that systemd will "see" the new service file:

systemctl daemon-reload

lsyncd configuration

With either lsyncd install method, you need a configuration file: /etc/lsyncd.conf. The following section will tell you how to build and test a configuration file.

Sample configuration for testing

Here is an example of a configuration file synchronizing /home to another computer. The target computer is going to be on local IP address: 192.168.1.40

  settings {
   logfile = "/var/log/lsyncd.log",
   statusFile = "/var/log/lsyncd-status.log",
   statusInterval = 20,
   maxProcesses = 1
   }

sync {
   default.rsyncssh,
   source="/home",
   host="root@192.168.1.40",
   excludeFrom="/etc/lsyncd.exclude",
   targetdir="/home",
   rsync = {
     archive = true,
     compress = false,
     whole_file = false
   },
   ssh = {
     port = 22
   }
}

Breaking down this file a bit:

• The logfile and statusFile will be automatically created when the service starts
• The statusInterval is the number of seconds to wait before writing to the status file
• maxProcesses is the number of lsyncd processes allowed to spawn. Unless you are running this on a busy computer, 1 process is enough.
• In the sync section default.rsyncssh says to use rsync over SSH
• The source= is the directory path you are syncing from
• The host= is your target computer that you are syncing to
• The excludeFrom= tells lsyncd where the exclusions file is. It must exist but can be empty.
• The targetdir= is the directory to which you send files. This will usually be equal to the source, but only sometimes.
• The rsync = section, and the options that you are running rsync with
• The ssh = section, specifying the SSH port that is listening on the target computer

If you add more than one directory to sync, you must repeat the entire "sync" section, including all the opening and closing brackets for each directory.

The lsyncd.exclude file

As noted earlier, the excludeFrom file must exist. Create that now:

touch /etc/lsyncd.exclude

For example, if you were syncing the /etc folder on your computer, there would be many files and directories you want to exclude in the lsyncd process. Each excluded file or directory is in the file, one per line:

/etc/hostname
/etc/hosts
/etc/networks
/etc/fstab

Test and turn up

With everything set up, you can test it all. Ensure your systemd lsyncd.service will start:

systemctl start lsyncd

If no errors appear after executing this command, check the status of the service just to ensure:

systemctl status lsyncd

If it shows the service running, use tail to see the ends of the two log files and ensure everything shows up:

tail /var/log/lsyncd.log
tail /var/log/lsyncd-status.log

Assuming that this all looks correct, go to the /home/[user] directory, where [user] is a computer user, and create a file there with touch.

touch /home/[user]/testfile

Go to the target computer and see if the file shows up. If so, everything is working. Set the lsyncd.service to start on boot with:

systemctl enable lsyncd

Remember to be careful

Anytime you synchronize a set of files or directories to another computer, think carefully about its effect on the target computer. Suppose you go back to The lsyncd.exclude File example earlier. Can you imagine what might happen if you did not exclude /etc/fstab?

fstab is the file configuring storage drives on any Linux computer. The disks and labels are almost certainly different on different machines. The next reboot of the target computer would likely fail.

Conclusions and references

lsyncd is a powerful tool for directory synchronization between computers. It is not hard to install or complex to maintain.

You can discover more about lsyncd by going to The Official Site

Author: Steven Spencer

Contributors: Ezequiel Bruni, tianci li, Ganna Zhyrnova