I saw this article on Linux Journal and decided that I had to check it out; especially since installing unison for Mandrake is as easy as urpmi unison.
I had been using rsync to keep certain local and remote directories in sync, but I found that I would have to always remember which had the most recent data so I didn’t clobber my files; unison seems to do a far better job of merging conflicts.
My first test was to sync my IRC logs from #nblug:
unison .gaim/logs/irc/augie@irc.nblug.org/ ssh://linux/.gaim/logs/irc/augie@irc.nblug.org/
Success!
Now for the same thing but with less typing (over the long term); I create a file called irc.nblug.prf under the .unison directory like so:
root = .gaim/logs/irc/augie@irc.nblug.org/
root = ssh://linux/.gaim/logs/irc/augie@irc.nblug.org/
Now when I want to synch the two directories up it is as simple as unison irc.nblug .