I'm trying to set up git-annex on my mac (running macOS Sonoma 14.7). I want it to sync a directory to a linux server so that the linux server always has a full copy of the directory.

The linux server runs Arch Linux. All I did there was installing the git-annex package from the official package repository. (sshd, rsync etc. were already installed)

On the mac I used brew install git-annex to install and brew services start git-annex to start the service, then issued git annex webapp to start the web app for configuration. In the web app I followed the setup wizard to create a local repo and added the linux server as a remote (basically what's shown in the 10 minute assistant intro screencast but I chose group "backup" instead of "transfer" for the remote).

When I now copy files into the repository, they get auto-added to the repository – but not auto-transferred to the remote. For that to happen I have to restart the service (brew services restart git-annex) or do a git annex push / git annex sync --content.

After copying a file to the repo:

~/annex $ git annex list
here
|linux-server
||web
|||bittorrent
||||
X___ file.ext

After restarting etc.:

~/annex $ git annex list
here
|linux-server
||web
|||bittorrent
||||
XX__ file.ext

Is there a way to have added files automatically transfer to the remote?

I also noticed that the web app hangs for 30s every 4-5 clicks. Something seems to be wrong with my setup and configuration. What can it be?

Thanks, this seems to be a really great a versatile tool!


Update:

Looks like the git-annex service doesn't really run:

$ brew services
Name      Status  User     File
git-annex stopped username ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.git-annex.plist

Trying to start it yields:

$ brew services start git-annex
Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error
Try re-running the command as root for richer errors.
Error: Failure while executing; `/bin/launchctl bootstrap gui/501 /Users/username/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.git-annex.plist` exited with 5.

Restarting does not show any errors

$ brew services restart git-annex
Stopping `git-annex`... (might take a while)
==> Successfully stopped `git-annex` (label: homebrew.mxcl.git-annex)
==> Successfully started `git-annex` (label: homebrew.mxcl.git-annex)

yet it makes no difference:

$ brew services
Name      Status  User     File
git-annex stopped username ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.git-annex.plist