1.
The package unison is installed.
2. Enough disk space is available on your local and remote computer.
3. If you want to benet from Unison's full potential, make sure that Unison is also
installed and running on the remote computer.
In case you need help, run Unison with the -doc topics option to get a full list of
available sections.
For permanent settings, Unison allows the creation of proles that specify Unison
preferences such as the directories (roots) to synchronize, which types of les to ignore,
and other options. The proles are stored as text les in ~/.unison with the le ex-
tension *.prf.
Using the GUI
To synchronize different directories with Unison's GUI, proceed as follows:
1
Start Unison by pressing Alt + F2 and entering unison.
2
If you run Unison for the rst time and without any further options, you are
prompted for a source directory. Enter the source directory you want to synchro-
nize and click OK.
3
Enter the target directory. It can be either local or remote. If you want to synchro-
nize to a remote directory, choose the method (SSH, RSH or Socket) and enter
the hostname and an optional user.
4
If you have not synchronized these two directories before, a warning dialog ap-
pears, informing you that Unison will now compare the contents of those direc-
tories. Close the warning with OK and wait until Unison has collected the infor-
mation from both directories and displays the differences in the main window.
The left column shows the source directory you have selected, the third column
shows the target directory. If there are differences between the directories, the
Action column shows a symbol, proposing an action. A green arrow indicates
that a le has been modied, added or deleted in the source or the target directory.
The direction of the arrow indicates the direction that the change would be
propagated if you performed the synchronization now. A question mark indicates
Copying and Sharing Files 553
