Small - Sync'eM ALL (Rust Implementation)

NOTE: This is a Rust port of the original Elixir application.

Overview

Small is a file synchronization application that watches for file changes and automatically uploads them via SFTP to a remote server. It features:

Supervised architecture with automatic recovery
SSH Public Key authentication (with encrypted keys support)
Stream files of any size to remote through SFTP channels
Persistent Queue and History (SQLite backend)
Web-based history viewer (http://localhost:8000)
Asynchronous by design using Tokio
macOS notifications

Requirements

Rust 1.90+ (required)
macOS 10.10+ (only because it supports macOS Notification Center via osascript)
SSH2 key (.ssh/id_ed25519 by default, optionally with password, but held in the config.toml plaintext)

Configuration

Small requires a SSH accessible backend where files will be stored and hosted from. For this I use Nginx configuration like this:

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name s.verknowsys.com;
        location / {
           return 302 https://s.verknowsys.com/$request_uri;
        }
        autoindex off;
        index index.html;
}

server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        http2 on;

        ssl_certificate_key /Services/Certsd/certs/wild_verknowsys.com/domain.key;
        ssl_certificate /Services/Certsd/certs/wild_verknowsys.com/chained.pem;

        server_name s.verknowsys.com;
        root /Web/Sshots/;

        ssl_protocols TLSv1.3 TLSv1.2;
        ssl_session_timeout 1d;
        ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
        ssl_session_tickets off;

        # enable HSTS for A+ grade:
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000" always;
        add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";

        autoindex off;
}

Small uses a TOML configuration file located at:

macOS: ~/Library/Small/config.toml
Unix: ~/.small/config.toml

Example configuration:

# Small Configuration
open_history_on_start = false

[[configs]]
default = false
active_at = "00:00:00-8:59:59"
username = "otheruser"
hostname = "my.ssh.host.com"
ssh_port = 50022
ssh_key = ".ssh/id_ed25519"
ssh_key_pass = ""
address = "https://your.site.com/"
remote_path = "/Web/Sshots"
watch_path = "/Users/your-user/Desktop"

[[configs]]
default = true
active_at = "9:00:00-17:00:00"
username = "anuser"
hostname = "some.web.address.com"
ssh_port = 22
ssh_key = ".ssh/id_ed25519"
ssh_key_pass = ""
address = "https://some.web.endpoint.com/"
remote_path = "/Destination/Web/Dir"
watch_path = "/Users/your-user/Pictures/Screenshots"

[[configs]]
default = false
active_at = "17:00:01-23:59:59"
username = "otheruser"
hostname = "my.ssh.host.com"
ssh_port = 50022
ssh_key = ".ssh/id_ed25519"
ssh_key_pass = ""
address = "https://your.site.com/"
remote_path = "/Web/Sshots"
watch_path = "/Users/your-user/Desktop"

# Notification settings
[notifications]
start = true
clipboard = true
upload = true
error = true

# Sound settings
[sounds]
start = false
start_sound = "Glass"
clipboard = false
clipboard_sound = "Tink"
upload = true
upload_sound = "Hero"
error = true
error_sound = "Sosumi"

NOTE: The time ranges are compared naively, so for example "17:00:01-8:59:59" will not work as expected. Additional config part with the time range since "0:00:00" is required as in the example above.

Building

# Build release version
cargo build --release

# The binary will be at: target/release/small

Installation

bin/install

Create your config.toml file as shown above.

Run it

cargo run --release

The application will:

Start watching the parent directory of your project directory for file changes
Upload any new or modified files via SFTP
Copy the upload URL to your clipboard
Maintain a history viewable at http://localhost:8000

Development

# Run in development mode
ENV=dev LOG=debug cargo run

# Run tests
cargo test

Differences from Elixir Version

Database: Uses SQLite instead of Mnesia for persistence
Runtime: Uses Tokio async runtime instead of Erlang OTP
File Watching: Uses notify crate instead of fs Erlang library
Web Server: Uses warp instead of Cowboy
Configuration: Uses TOML format instead of Elixir syntax
Performance: Generally faster startup and lower memory footprint

Project Structure

src/
├── config.rs         # Configuration management
├── database.rs       # SQLite database operations
├── main.rs           # Application entry point
├── lib.rs            # Common library module
├── notification.rs   # macOS notifications and clipboard
├── sftp.rs           # SFTP upload manager
├── utils.rs          # Utility functions
├── tests.rs          # Test functions
├── watcher.rs        # File system watching
└── webapi.rs         # Web history server

Autostart (macOS)

To run Small automatically on login, you can create a LaunchAgent plist file or use any service manager.

Example using a simple shell script in your shell profile:

bin/install

License

MIT

Author

Daniel (@dmilith) Dettlaff

small-bin 1.0.3