Shared vault Dropbox sync stops working by itself, until disabled/reenabled syncing [moved to email]

semblance

I have a secondary vault, which is set up to sync over Dropbox with another user's primary vault, as described at the end of this post.

When I first set this up it worked like a dream, and changes made by either user would sync to the other user's copy of the vault perfectly — but a few weeks later, it simply stopped working apparently by itself. When the other user makes a change, it fails to sync over to my copy of the vault, and vice versa.

I checked each user's Preferences > Sync settings, and they both have a current sync time such as "Last synced: 11 seconds ago" or similar, and they are both configured to sync to the same path relative to their Dropbox folder, e.g. ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain.

The folder "1Password-Shared" belongs to me, and is configured in Dropbox to be shared with the other user so it appears in their Dropbox folder, and the Dropbox app is running and fully synced for both users.

To diagnose the problem further, I logged in as the other user and inspected the contents of ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain/data/default/ using Terminal.app. When I ran "ls -ltr" in this folder, I found that the most recent .1password file there is several days old.

Given that the other user created a new Login 5 minutes ago, this makes me think that when 1Password says "Last synced: 11 seconds ago", it is incorrect — if 1Password really had synced all changes to Dropbox 11 seconds ago, then surely one of the files in this folder would have a more recent timestamp, right?

So then I did something very simple: I turned Dropbox sync off and then back on again, and re-pointed it at exactly the same file, Shared.agilekeychain. 1Password said it found existing data and would "merge" it.

Then guess what, using Terminal.app to look in ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain/data/default/, I saw that the newest .1password files now had a much more recent timestamp.

So then I logged in as myself, and opened my 1Password and switched to the secondary vault which I was sharing. But the new Login was not appearing in my 1Password!

So I checked Preferences > Sync, and it said "Last synced: 3 seconds ago". Then I waited some time, quit and restarted the app, but it still didn't appear.

When this was working, changes were appearing almost immediately — so I knew something was wrong.

So then I inspected the contents of my ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain/data/default/ folder using Terminal.app. Sure enough, the new .1password files with the current timestamps had synced over. This confirms that the native Dropbox sync between the two users was working perfectly, and had been working all along.

The problem was that my 1Password app wasn't picking up the changes. Once again, when 1Password said "Last synced: 3 seconds ago", it appears to be incorrect — only this time it was failing to read new changes from the Dropbox folder, rather than write them to it.

So then I tried applying the same fix again: I turned Dropbox syncing off and back on again, and pointed it at the same file Shared.agilekeychain. Once again 1Password said it found existing data and would merge it.

After this, the new Login finally appeared in my 1Password app.

The next day

The next day, both myself and the other user made further changes, and sync had stopped working again in both directions! This time I have not applied my workaround (turning sync off and on again), in case there are any diagnostics I can apply while it's in this broken state. I have left the apps running, with changes not synced despite 1Password claiming it has synced.

So, once again, 1Password has got into the following state:

• Both users have created new Logins today
• Both users have Preferences > Sync enabled, and pointing to ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain (for me this is configured on a secondary vault, and for the other user it's configured on their primary vault)
• For both users, Preferences > Sync reports "Last sync: n seconds ago" where n is a small number
• The folder ~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared is shared between the two native Dropbox users, both OS X users have the Dropbox app running and fully synced
• Each user's changes are NOT appearing in the other user's view of the vault
• For both users, the newest file under "~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain/data/default/" is more than a day old — much older than the date the new Logins were created

As a result, when 1Password says "Last sync: n seconds ago", I simply don't believe it any more. It doesn't appear to be reliable.

semblance

I have sent a diagnostic report for this issue, as suggested here.

sjk

Hi, @semblance.

Thanks for the detailed description of this problem you're having with Dropbox syncing and sending the Diagnostics Report (to the preferred address :)).

Before getting this sorted out through email can you mention here if Dropbox syncing had been working okay until after a system restart? Thanks!

semblance

Hi there @sjk,

I couldn't remember whether the sync failure coincided with system restarts, so I recreated the scenario as follows.

1. I tested Dropbox sync for my primary vault between my devices (iMac, iPad, iPhone) by creating new items on each device and checking they propagated to the other devices. It was already working fine.
2. I tested Dropbox sync between my secondary vault and my other user's primary vault, by creating new items as each user and checking they propagated to the other user. It was still in a broken state from earlier, so I "fixed" it as described above, by disabling and re-enabling Dropbox sync on both sides. Then I did the test again, and it was successful.

So at this point, everything was working fine.

Then I did a system restart.

After restarting I did all the tests again, and found that primary vault sync between my devices (1) was still working fine. But shared vault sync (2) had stopped working. Dropbox was still running, and the failure mode was exactly as I described in the first post above: the Preferences > Sync dialog reports "Last sync: n seconds ago", but the "~/Dropbox/1Password-Shared/Shared.agilekeychain/data/default/" folder does not contain any files newer than the last time it was actually working. And of course changes made by one user don't show up in the other user's view of the vault.

Based on these tests, it seems my issue is different to the one described in the thread "Dropbox sync didn't work any longer", since they're talking about sync of the primary vault between devices failing (which is actually working for me even after a restart).

However — for the shared vault sync issue that I'm experiencing, it appears your hunch is correct about the failure occurring after a system restart.

sjk

Hi @semblance,

I hope Kyle's email about your Dropbox syncing issue was helpful. The likely reason why it continues working with your primary vault after a restart is because the 1P keychain is in the default location, unlike the 1P keychain synced with the secondary vault.

semblance

Thanks @sjk, yes the mail was helpful.

So basically it's a known issue related to sandboxing that only affects the Mac App Store version of 1Password, and you suspect it only affects my secondary vault and not my primary vault because the secondary's keychain is not in the default location.

Kyle offered a number of workarounds in the mail until this can be fixed, so I'll follow up there — thanks.