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::: iTunes Remote Sync v1.0 ALPHA by m4rkw - http://twitter.com/m4rkw :::
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:: Introduction

iOS5 and iCloud are cool, but it's annoying that you can't sync your device remotely.

It would be nice if you could simply VPN into your home machine in order to sync, but because
iTunes uses the Bonjour protocol, which uses multicast DNS, the iDevice and iTunes can't see
eachother even if there's a VPN connection.

iTunes Remote Sync solves this by creating temporary Bonjour proxies that allow your device
and iTunes to communicate over the VPN.

There are some limitations to this however, you will need a computer at the remote location in
order to broadcast the Bonjour proxy to your device.  That computer needs to be a Mac, and you
also need the remote Mac to be on the same wifi network as your iDevice.  You can however use a
Macbook with a 3G dongle, just create an ad-hoc wifi network on the macbook, join your iDevice
to it and give both a different IP address.


:: Requirements

 - iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad
 - Machine with iTunes running connected to the internet that you can ssh into
 - Some kind of natively iDevice-compatible VPN connection between your iDevice and iTunes machine
   (iVPN can enable iDevice-compatible VPN functionality in OSX Lion desktop version)
 - Access to a Mac computer at the remote network that you want to sync from


:: Setup

1. Set up passwordless ssh key authentication from the remote computer to your iTunes computer.

On the remote computer or macbook, generate an ssh keypair:

$ ssh-keygen

Dump out the public key:

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

This will dump the contents of the public key into your terminal.  Copy this and place it in
~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the computer that has the iTunes library.  Set the permissions to mode 600
using:

$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

From the remote computer / macbook you should now be able to ssh to your iTunes machine without a
password using:

ssh <ip>

If this doesn't work, you'll need to fix it before continuing.

2. On the remote computer / macbook, install the DNS-SD Ruby gem needed to run IRS:

$ sudo gem install dnssd

3. In the iTunesRemoteSync directory, copy the config.sample.rb file to config.rb:

cp config.sample.rb config.rb

4. Edit config.rb and set the parameters accordingly.  You must set the ssh parameters or the program
won't work as it won't be able to connect to your remote iTunes machine.  You can optimise by also
specifying your iTunes library name and iDevice name.  Note that the iDevice name is **NOT** the name
you gave it in iTunes, it's a long ugly sequence of hex numbers (for the technically minded, an ipv4
mac address concatenated with an ipv6 mac address).  To find your iDevice's device name you can run:

./irs dump

and it will dump out all the iTunes library and iDevices it can see on the local network.

You can choose not to bother entering your iTunes library name and iDevice name if you wish, but the
sync setup process will be slightly longer as it has to figure them out for you using Bonjour queries.
Also if more than one device is found when you attempt to sync and you haven't specified a device name
you will be prompted to choose which device should be proxy'd off to the remote iTunes library.

At this point you should be ready to continue with..


:: Usage

1. Ensure iTunes is running on the remote iTunes machine.

2. Ensure that your remote computer (eg macbook) and iDevice are on the same wifi network.  If you want
to sync over a 3G connection that your macbook or other remote computer has, you'll need to first create
an ad-hoc network between the iDevice and the macbook and give both devices a unique IP address.

3. On the remote computer, establish the Bonjour proxies:

$ ./irs sync

After maybe 30 seconds to a minute (depending on the speed of your connection), your device should appear
in iTunes on the iTunes machine.  The first time you do this it would be handy to have a screen sharing
or VNC connection set up so you can see it in iTunes to verify it's working.  Once it appears you can
sync as normal, but be aware that it can take a while if your connection is slow.

Note that it may take up to a minute to show up in iTunes after establishing the proxies.

When you're done syncing, you can disable the local and remote Bonjour proxy with:

$ ./irs off


Any bugs, issues, suggestions ---> http://twitter.com/m4rkw
.