Configuration utility for Syncthing

Manipulate Syncthing's configuration structure from the command line using a jq filter.

Syncthing provides the syncthing cli config subcommand for making configuration changes (e.g. syncthing cli config options start-browser set false). It works well for most options. Modifying lists of items, e.g. the relay addresses, is more complicated: items can be added or removed one at a time and there's no command to replace or clear the list at once.

This is where stsetup steps in. It fetches the whole configuration using the /rest/config API endpoint, also used by the aforementioned cli config subcommand, applies the jq filter, and then uploads the configuration again. If a restart is required to apply the changes made it's also triggered and waited for.

Usage

Syncthing must be installed and configured to be automatically restarted by a daemon or process control system (e.g. systemd or supervisord) upon exit.

$ cat >myconfig.jq <<'EOF'
.options += {
  alwaysLocalNets: ["10.0.0.0/8", "172.16.0.0/12", "192.168.0.0/16"],
  keepTemporariesH: (3 * 24),
}
EOF

$ stsetup -v myconfig.jq

See the -h output for more options.

Variables provided to the jq filter:

Name	Description
local_device_id	Device ID of the local instance.

Example filter using local_device_id to set the device name from an environment variable:

.devices += [] |
(.devices[] | select(.deviceID == $local_device_id)) += {
  name: env.SYNCTHING_NAME,
  paused: false,
}

stsetup can be invoked automatically using a systemd service override (e.g. /etc/systemd/user/syncthing.service.d/override.conf):

[Service]
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/stsetup /usr/local/share/syncthing/config.jq

Installation

The code is written as a Bash script using the jq, curl and xmllint programs. The auxiliary find_unused_port program requires Python 3.x.

Pre-built packages are provided for all releases:

• Debian/Ubuntu (.deb)
• Alpine Linux (*.apk)