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Corionis ELS : Entertainment Library Synchronizer

Release 4.1

Added:

• Tools, Archiver to compress a list of Origins, e.g. log and runtime data files.
• Tools, Cleanup to remove aged files.
• System, Email Servers to define outgoing SMTP server(s) for notification emails.
• HTML and text Mismatches and What's New files.
• Email options in Libraries, General with selections for what emails to receive.
• A "match dates" option in Libraries, Bibliography.
• Whitelist/blacklist checking to the sftp component.
• Various bug fixes.

Release 4.0

ELS may be used in a variety of ways. Some ideas are:

• Use the Navigator desktop application to manage content, create Tools and Jobs, edit ELS network- and security-related settings and execute Jobs composed of a sequence of Tasks made up of Tools.
  
  The available Tools are:

  • Duplicate Finder, manual only
  • Empty Directory Finder, manual only
  • Junk Remover, manual or Job
  • Operations, see below, manual or Job
  • Renamer, manual or Job
  • Sleep, Jobs only
    
    

  The most common Operations are:

  • Local or Remote publish : Back-up based on the Task Origins
  • Subscriber Listener : The subscribe-side for remote publish
  • Hint Server : Track manual changes between remote back-up systems
  • Hint server force quit : Force a remote Hint Server to quit
  • Subscriber force quit : Force a remote subscriber listener to quit

• Run Operations or Jobs directly or in a script from the command line or scheduled process using cron or a Task Scheduler.

• Basic local back-up with locally-attached storage devices. The back-up device(s) could be removable for better protection.

• LAN or Internet back-up to other computers running a Subscriber Listener where each Subscriber carries all or a portion of the data collection reducing the potential risk of loss and spreading-out the storage load.

• Cloud back-up to an external storage location such as DropBox. The cloud drive(s) must be mounted locally and appear as a system storage device.

Major Concepts

Navigator

The Navigator desktop application is just one Operation available for executing ELS.

Command Line

ELS started as a command line-only media back-up tool in 2015. All Operations and options are supported from the command line and may be used in scripts and scheduled processes.

Back-ups

ELS uses a publish/subscribe conceptual model. ELS compares one or more libraries from a subscriber (the back-up) with those on a publisher (the primary data source). ELS then synchronizes each subscriber library with the publisher.

Hints

Hints are an optional mechanism to synchronize deletes, moves and renames to a Collection with each Subscriber at back-up time or manually in Navigator. Additions to a collection are inherent and do not involve Hints.

Jobs

ELS includes a variety of Tools including Operations that may be combined into a sequence of Tasks to create Jobs that may be executed inside the current Navigator, or in the foreground or background, or used to Generate a command line or desktop shortcut.

Generate

Because ELS may be configured in a variety of ways a desktop shortcut and command line Generator is available in Navigator under File, Generate for the current Navigator configuration and under Jobs, Manage, Generate/Run.

Library & Collection JSON Files

Different options are available for specifying either a library file or collection file for the publisher and subscriber.

A "Library" file has basic information describing an ELS data instance and lists the libraries and their sources. It is the minimum required.

A "Collection" file is a Library file that includes the individual items in each library, files and directories.

If a Library file is specified automatic scans of those Library sources are performed. If a Collection file is specified only the items in the file are used.

Library files are created in Navigator. Also, an add-on tool is available to generate a basic ELS library file from a Plex Media Server, see the ELS Plex Generator. ELS is not specific to Plex. It just happens to be the media server I use.

Generating a Collection JSON File

A Collection file may be generated using the -i or --export-items option and specifying a publisher library file as input.

If a collection file is specified only the items in that file are processed. This allows the file to be edited if desired.

Wiki Pages

Command Line	Describes the various command-line options.
Communications	Describes the use of ELS over a LAN or the Internet.
Contact	How to contact this project.
Developer Notes	Notes for developers extending or modifying ELS.
Downloads	Requirements and downloads.
ELS Plex Generator Utility	Add-on utility for Plex Media Server.
Hints	Hints to coordinate manual changes.
Regular Expressions	Details of supported pattern matching.
Release Notes	List of changes.