Overview
Starting with version 2.6.0, Resilio Connect Agent allows opening a user-interface on local computer to monitor syncing activity. It's supported for Windows and OS X operating systems.
Enabling The User-Interface
There are two ways to enable agent user-interface
Works for new installations and already configured agents. Update agent config and add "use_gui":true
parameter. In the end config should look like this at minimum:
{
"use_gui":true,
"folders_storage_path": "%DOWNLOADS%",
"management_server": {
"host": "192.168.1.182:8444",
"cert_authority_fingerprint": "61887..d95578",
"bootstrap_token": "FH..K",
"disable_cert_check": false
}
}
For new installation on Windows
- put agent’s config beside msi and run the msi. On step select option to create shortcut for user-interface and add it to autostart.
- Agent will install and run as Windows Service. It will also create shortcut on desktop that will launch user-interface. Agent icon will also appear in tray.
- On Windows, the user-interface is just an additional feature to the Windows Service, and spawns a separate process from "C:\Program Files\Resilio Connect Agent\Resilio Connect Agent.exe" file, same as the service itself.
- It runs only in current user's session and not available for others. Trying to launch another UI process in a different user session will give the corresponding error.
- It does not work if the service not running, and will give the following error message.
- On the other hand, the service is not dependent on user-interface module. Even if you quit user-interface, Agent service will continue working and syncing files.
Proceed with installation. On Windows keep checkmark enabled on finish installation screen.
About The User-Interface Design
Agent user-interface is html based. It has tabs: Folders, Transfers, History and Options. Folders tab lists the sync shares and shows their status. Transfers tab shows transfer job runs (distribution and Consolidation) and Script jobs. History is the list of events for this agent, it’s a good source to trace the syncing activity for the last 30 days (or last 20K of events). Options keep some of changeable settings: device name, connectivity to the Management Console, bandwidth scheduler, default folder location and permissions for the MC Admin.
Folders/Transfers tab have the following columns:
- Name Name of the folder selected for synchronization on this device. Clicking on the folder name opens the folder in file browser. Right-click on the folder name gives option to open its Archive (works only for sync jobs). Folders with Transparent Selective Sync (on Windows) or (on mac OS) enabled don’t have background filling.
- Status All these reflect status toward priority_peers if these are set in Agent profile (Synced, Progress, Paused, Error, No peers, Connecting to peers). Synchronization errors and file warning appear in this columns. The File warning are only kept for active job runs on tab transfers, and are removed from Agent UI once the job run is completed or aborted.
- Size / Local Size - total size of the share, and the size of files present on this agent. For shares with TSS enabled, it usually differs from total Size.
- Sending / Receiving The current upload and download speed respectively.
- Path Full path to the directory on the workstation.
- Upload queue/ Download queue The number of files pending in upload/download queue. Clicking on it opens the list of file that are being uploaded or downloaded. Only 10 currently active files are shown in the queue.
- Files / Local Files The count of files in the share, total vs present on the agent. For Selective Sync shares the count may differ even if status is ‘Synced’.
- Date added Time when the job was created for this agent and appeared here.
- Date synced The date when agent verified and confirmed that it’s synced up. Agent does it periodically every 10 minutes and upon restart. If status is ‘Synced’, it’s also duplicated at the bottom of user-interface and in tray icon menu.
- Last transferred Date when file bits were actually transferred. Unlike “Date synced”, it only shows actual data transfer time. Thus it may be behind “Date Synced” if nothing has been actually transferred since then.
General: shows the Agent's name, version and status of connection to the MC. It's possible to change MC address only if the agent was initially connected using simple mode (without configuration file). "Show notifications" , if enabled, let agent show system events notification to the user about the Agent's activity.
User controlled: allows to manage the behavior of the Agent independently of Resilio Admin. However, this is only if allowed from the Agent's Profile. Rad more about setting bandwidth scheduler here.
Read more about Default folder location here.
At the bottom of user-interface
There’s option to pause agent and set speed limits through agent UI. To allow a user to pause agent, MC admin shall set yes for "Allow pause from UI" in Agent profile.
If user pauses agent in user-interface, pause tooltip says ‘Paused by user’. If agent is paused by Scheduled in MC, tooltip says “Paused by admin”. These two pauses interlap. Read here for more details about the pausing and using bandwidth scheduler in Agent UI.
Center field shows either Last Synced time or a core error:
- Bind port busy
- No connection to tracker server
- No network connection
- No connection to Management Console
- Failed to connect to Management Console: invalid certificate fingerprint
Utilizing User-Interface
- Empty if synced, if nothing to download/upload;
- Up/down arrows, if there is an active download process (for selective sync too) or active upload to specific host
- Red dot if there is error or agent disconnected from MC
- Paused if agent paused
- syncing: up/down speed and number of files up/down;
- synced: last synced time and files synced.
- pause/resulme: if pausing the agent from UI it allowed by the admin.
- error: status may be syncing or failed, error indicator (can we link it to error in user-interface?). Cannot connect to MC
- Low disk space (agent is running out of space on the drive where sync share’s located)
- Too large file detected (file size exceeds file system limitations, e.g. 4+GB on FAT32)
- File is locked (agent does not have access to the file right now)
- Excessive time difference (UTC time difference between agents is more than 600 seconds)
- Not enough permissions to access "file/folder" (the agent does not have read-write permissions to the mentioned file/folders)
- Service files are not correct or missed (the identifier file .sync/ID of the share was deleted or got corrupt)
- Wrong location or folder was deleted (the folder itself was deleted from the drive)
- Finished uploading files to "Server" (if priority peer is set in MC)
- File editing conflict (if
notify_file_edit_conflict_time_diff
is set in MC)
Priority Server
File collisions (file edit conflicts)
To enable notification add custom parameter notify_file_edit_conflict_time_diff
with value to Agent profile. Value is in seconds and it’s the maximum difference between “date modified” of files for them to be considered colliding. It works only if local file was updated and then on remote agent file was updated within that time. In other word: if userA updates local file, then userB updates file as well, file is moved to Archive on A’s computer and A is notified about this. Notification won’t appear if B just changes mtime of file (with ‘touch’ for example). Read more about it here.