Notepad

13 KiB

Raw Permalink Blame History

Syncing your obsidian to version control is probably the most efficient way to host your information locally without relying on a cloud provider for unlimited storage. View the process below to see how I got started.

Git manual update command Shortcut:

git add . 
git fetch 
git commit -m "Noted: `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`"
git push -u origin main

Syncing my Obsidian: The Steps I took

My Obsidian files are all stored within Google Drive. So in order to maintain sync while still preserving cloud storage space, I used a few different steps than the guides, and well really it was a culmination of it all.

CURRENT METHOD: Syncing via Gitea Server

This can be done locally or via Google Drive. However, I will be using Linode to host Gitea to host my obsidian and all my repos locally.

But basically this is the self-hosted information flow: A Sketch !

1. Setting Up Git repo on your local machine.

Go to the folder on your laptop that you'd like to start the git syncing your Obsidian Vault at and run:

git init

This sets up the git process. Next you have to clone the existing repository and pull .

git clone http:/giteaurlhere.git

And then pull the existing information from the repo.

git pull 
git add .
git commit -m "some message"
git push -u origin main

2. Opening Your Vault in that location

Then Open Your Obsidian Vault there. You are now ready to have your changes synced from Obsidian to Git.

git add .
git commit -m "Updated: `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`"
git push -u origin main --force

Push your changes once more after you have opened your vault there.

Every time you open your git now:

git pull #make sure you do this to sync your changes 
git add . 
git commit -m "Updated: `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`"
git push -u origin main

3. Syncing Your Vault to Push every few minutes

So this is all great and all, you can now push and pull to a remote server that you own! However, it is a bit annoying to have to do the same terminal commands of git pull, add, commit, push, blah blah dsjkhfalfhk. It can get repetitive. So what do we do? We make a script that can take care of this automatically for us.

For Linux: Sync the Obsidian vault very few minutes with this script via `cron`:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This says find the first instance of a sh (shell)
# binary and use that shell to execute these commands.
# There is little to no complexity here and no bashisms so it
# should work just fine on most systems and instances of shells
# (bash, zsh, sh, etc.)

ZK_PATH="PATH TO YOUR VAULT"
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ We are assigning the variable `ZK_PATH`
# with the (maybe) long string to our vault's location (mine is super
# long so this makes the final command look cleaner,
# it's unnecessary if you care)

cd "$ZK_PATH"
# ^^^^^^^^^^^ cd: Change Directory to your vault's location

git pull
# ^^^^^^ So if any changes occurred remotely or on another machine
# your local machine knows to pull those changes down instead of
# having to wait for a local change to run the script

CHANGES_EXIST="$(git status --porcelain | wc -l)"
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ we are assigning
# a value to the variable `CHANGES_EXIST`, the value is the output
# of `git add --porcelain` which outputs a simple list of just the
# changed files and then the output is piped into the `wc` utility
# which is "word count" but with the `-l` flag it will count lines.
# basically, it says how many total files have been modified.
# if there are no changes the output is 0

if [ "$CHANGES_EXIST" -eq 0 ]; then
   exit 0
fi
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The whole if block is saying
# in plain english: if there are no changes (CHANGES_EXIST = 0)
# then exit with no error code `exit 0` if there are changes,
# then continue on with the script

git pull
# ^^^^^^ git pull: this will look at your repo and say "any changes?"
# if there are they will be brought down and applied to your local machine
# In the context of a team environment, a more robust approach is needed
# as this workflow doesnt factor in branches, merge conflicts, etc
# but if you leave your home machine, do work on the work machine,
# push to the remote repo before you return to the home machine, then
# you can just get the latest changes applied to the home machine and
# continue on like normal
git add .
# ^^^^^^^ git add. = add all current changes in the repo no
# matter the level of nested folders/files
git commit -q -m "Last Sync: $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")"
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# git commit -q -m: this says we are committing changes to
# our repo, -q says BE QUIET no output prints to terminal
# if ran manually, -m defines a message for the commit log
# the -m message is "Last Sync: $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" this
# runs the command date with the formatting arguments for a
# date in YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS format as your commit message
git push -q
# ^^^^^^^^^ git push -q: push the changes to github and
# BE QUIET about it The semicolons between commands are
# just saying run each command and then run the subsequent
# command, they're just separators

 Save

For Mac: Sync Obsidian vault via `launchd` by writing a plist script:

We will be using launchd. Check your list of services by:

sudo launctl list

! It sort of looks like that!^ So the goal here is to put a launchd .plist into that so that your Mac knows to trigger a LaunchDaemon upon a certain trigger.

First, however we need to make a bash script that does that syncing itself. This can be done by navigating to ~/.local/bin and create a shell script by:

touch zk_sync 
chmod +x zk_sync

Separately: Also make sure to copy the absolute path of your vault as that will be the environment variable that you will input into ZK_PATH to ensure that it still works. You can obtain the path by:

> pwd
#output
> /Users/shwethajayaraj/Google Drive/My Drive/RESOURCES (Research - my notebook)/collabtestdir/Notepad

If there are spaces in your working directory just make sure that you put in wrapped double quotation marks.

What are the actual contents of the shell script though that have to be done?? Well, go ahead and vim into the zk_sync file and paste the following in:

Attempt #3 (this one worked!!):

#!/usr/bin/env sh


export ZK_PATH=/Volumes/GoogleDrive-117209510583853875316/My\ Drive/Resources/collabtestdir/Notepad

cd "$ZK_PATH"

git fetch

CHANGES_EXIST=$(git status — porcelain | wc -l)

current="`date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`"

msg="Updated: $current"


if [ “$CHANGES_EXIST” -eq 0 ]; 
then
	exit 0

  
fi
	git add --all; 
	git commit -q -m "$msg + $CHANGES_EXIST"; 
	# Updated: 2019-08-28 10:22:06 + lines changes
	sleep 10 # for testing 
	git pull # --rebase is the default 
	sleep 10 # for testing 
	git push -q

Updated zk_sync file"


#!/usr/bin/env sh

  

export ZK_PATH=/Volumes/GoogleDrive-117209510583853875316/My\ Drive/Resources/collabtestdir/Notepad

cd "$ZK_PATH"

git fetch

  

CHANGES_EXIST=$(git status — porcelain | wc -l)

formatted_date=$(date +"%A, %B %d, %Y, %H:%M:%S")

# current="`date + %H:%M:%S'`"

  

msg="Updated: $formatted_date"

  

if [ “$CHANGES_EXIST” -eq 0 ];

then

exit 0

  

fi

git add .

git commit -m "$msg"; # Updated: 2019-08-28 10:22:06

sleep 10

#git pull

git push -u origin main

Attempt #4: (Previous one broke, Current one)


#!/usr/bin/env sh

  

export ZK_PATH=/Volumes/GoogleDrive-117209510583853875316/My\ Drive/Resources/collabtestdir/Notepad

cd "$ZK_PATH"

git fetch

  

CHANGES_EXIST=$(git status — porcelain | wc -l)

formatted_date=$(date +"%A, %B %d, %Y, %H:%M:%S")

# current="`date + %H:%M:%S'`"

  

msg="Noted: $formatted_date"

  

if [ “$CHANGES_EXIST” -eq 0 ];

then

exit 0

  

fi

git add .

git commit -m "$msg"; # Noted: 2019-08-28 10:22:06

sleep 10

#git pull

git push -u origin main

Run the script in the /.local/bin directory:

bash zk_sync

and your git should be updated with that one command with the updated time and the number of lines that were changed in the git commit.

Now that we have ensured that the script itself the hard part is over. The next step is to make sure that you are syncing at a consistent time!

Now it is time to submit this to the launchd scheduler. Navigate to ~/Library/LaunchAgents as this is where you will be dropping your .plist file.

Then create the .plist which calls the previous zk_sync script that we made before by pasting the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" 
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>us.shwetha.obsidian</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Users/shwethajayaraj/bin/zk_sync.sh</string>
        </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>180</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>

note: The 180 integer interval is made in seconds, thus this script executes the automation to run every 3 minutes.

Once you have saved it as a .plist in the right directory, make sure that you test that it works. run:

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/us.shwetha.obsidian.plist

to load this launchd action. This may be in your local user directory as well.

Now check your gitea repository. ! Ta-da!! You did it!!! All your work will now be synced to git every few minutes.

No need for pesky cloud storage or physical systems anymore. :) Enjoy.

OLD METHOD: Making a Gitlab Repo in GDrive

DON'T DO THIS I learned the hard way :)

**Find your Google Drive location and copy the directory path.

pwd | pbcopy

Go to your local projects folder and git init there locally.

mkdir gitlab_sync
cd  gitlab_sync
git init
git branch -m main 
#renamed branch to main insted of master
#less typing xD

Then create a bare clone copy into your copied google drive location.

git clone --bare . ~user/Google\ Drive/My\ Drive/folder/location.git

Then go ahead and make a new remote using this git path inside your local directory.

git remote add NameOfRemote ~user/Google\ Drive/My\ Drive/folder/location.git

Make some changes to your git repository by adding files and commit those changes.

**git** add LICENSE.md
**git** commit -m 'Initial sync version'

Then I pushed the changes to the remote google drive location.

git push -u origin main

Pushing to Gitlab

Next, I added the (SSH) remote of the gitlab server to upload to as well.

git remote add NameofRemote git@gitblah.com:user/repo.git

I then created another branch for the upload sync to take place.

git branch AnotherBranch
git checkout AnotherBranch #switch into it

Then follow the instructions outlined on this article. Basically you then create a git clone of it in your new directory by git clone --bare . PATH_TO_GOOGLE_DRIVE_SYNC_FOLDER/ANY_SUBFOLDER_PATH/PROJECT_NAME.git
Then do a git remote by git remote add REMOTE_NAME PATH_TO_GOOGLE_DRIVE_SYNC_FOLDER/ANY_SUBFOLDER_PATH/PROJECT_NAME.git
Add files to stage for commit and commit a message.

git add .
git commit -m "an update message here"

Lastly, push the changes onto your quantum programming repo.

git push -u origin main

Voila! You should see the changes now over here. Or wherever you decided to set up host the git remote server on.

Resources & Referemces:

Follow the instructions here and document as you go:
- on Cron:
- UPDATE: crontab is deprecated for MacOS so the sync option given will not work.
  - the best next alternative is then to use launchd or keyboard scheduler as described through this youtube video.
  - Refer back to plists for a better understanding of implementation and usage.
This video that really helped me figure out Linode from the LearnLinux Youtube channel.
apparently the extension Obsidian-Git already does this in an easier way now
So this is how you push it to your gitlab
Refer to the Git page on here for more shortcuts.
This page exists now showing one way to setup gitea with Obsidian

13 KiB Raw Permalink Blame History Unescape Escape