Dropbox sync quirks. Possible data loss. It's there, but… it isn't there?
So, I had a pretty frustrating run-in with 1Password and Dropbox syncing last night (May 18). Before I get into the details of what happened and the way things are weird, this is what I have going from a hardware/software perspective.
Work Computer: Mid 2010 iMac, OS 10.8.5, 1Password 4.4 from the Mac App Store
Home Computer: Late 2012 Mac Mini, OS 10.9.3, 1Password 4.4 from the MAS
iPhone 5: iOS 7.1.1, 1Password 4.5.1
iPad: iOS 7.1.1, 1Password 4.5.1
All are setup to use Dropbox to sync a primary vault, and two different work-related vaults.
As you can see, there are a few moving parts, but nothing super vast, or out of the ordinary.
The problem that I am getting is that dropbox is apparently successfully syncing the keychain files, at least, I get notifications telling me as much, but some changes are not being reflected in the app itself. In my case, I wanted to login to the website we use to manage our health insurance benefits from my home computer. I fired up 1P and noticed that there were a number of items not showing up. They were there on my work computer, because I had seen them a couple days prior while at work. I checked the iPhone and iPad, and everything was there too. So I tried making a new secure note on my iPhone to see if that would show up on my home Mac. It did. Then I used the iPhone to add something to the notes field on one of missing items thinking that maybe it would help sort things out. It didn't help. The changes were reflected between the iPhone and iPad, but not the home Mac.
Then I figured I would just disable, then re-enable sync and things would be peachy. So that is what I did. after re-enabling Dropbox sync, I got a warning about existing items and do I want to merge and all that. I selected the merge option because there is not a ton of stuff in the work vault I was messing with, so it wouldn't be a big deal to get rid of duplicates and such. After merging, there was no visible change to anything. The missing items were still missing. Now here is where it starts to get a bit maddening. I launched 1P on my iPhone and for a split second things looked normal, then all the items that were missing on the Mac version disappeared. Sure enough, when I checked the iPad, the same thing happened. Likewise, when I got to work this morning, those items were now missing.
Time Machine to the rescue, right? Unfortunately, no. I restored the keychain file to a version prior to my futzing around but there was no change. Maybe using Dropbox to restore to a previous version would work? Again, no such luck because dropbox.com sees the keychain file as a folder and so there are hundreds of files in there, presumably every one of them would need to be restored, and to be honest, I'm not confident it would have any effect.
The next thing I did, I found something interesting. On my work computer I used the show package contents option to start poking around in the restored keychain file. Going to data -> default -> content.js and looking through the list, the missing items are in there, but they just are not being displayed in the app. So I'm left with the hunch that all that info is still poking around amongst all those encrypted files, I just can't see it on the front end.
Any ideas what might be going on here, better yet, any ideas of how to remedy this so I can get those lost items back?
Comments
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I'm so sorry to hear about the troubles that you've been having with 1Password. I think our best shot at getting those Logins back is by restoring to a backup. You can do this by selecting File > Restore and picking the backup from the day before you had the sync troubles. In order to get to the bottom of the sync issue though, we'll need to take a closer look at your system here to determine where things are getting tangled up. Could you please send us a Diagnostics Report from each of your computers?
http://learn2.agilebits.com/1Password4/diagnostic-report.html
Then attach the entire file to an email to us: support+forum@ agilebits .com
Please do not post your Diagnostics Report in the forums, but please do include a link to this thread in your email, along with your forum handle so that we can "connect the dots" when we see your Diagnostics Report in our inbox.
A short note here once you've sent the Report in will help us to keep an eye out for it. :)
Once we see the report we should be able to better assist you. Thanks in advance!
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