Folder sync with MacBook offline
I use folder sync within my LAN to sync a vault from my Mac to my MacBook and Windows Desktop.
Everything works fine until I run 1Password on the MacBook when it is not in the LAN.
I get repeated error messages that there is no connection to the sync folder until I choose "repair" which means disabling the folder sync.
Back in the home LAN I have to reconfigure the sync stuff anew.
I explicitly do not want to use cloud or WiFi as I am the only person to manage the vault and I like to keep my data private in the LAN - especially the secrets ;-)
Any solutions?
Thanks forwarded
Kai
Comments
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Sorry it's not a solution but you are running into the problem highlighted here in the knowledge base:
Folder Sync should only be configured with a folder on a local or removable drive (e.g. external hard drive or USB flash drive). Configuring it with a network volume (e.g. Time Capsule or other NAS) may cause problems if the device goes offline.
Maybe others can come up with a solution but I thought it worth pointing out that knowledge base article in case you'd not seen it.
Stephen
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Hi Stephen,
thanks for your quick reply.
I actually hadn't seen that article thanks for the advice.
But I have seen a comment about "using WIFI for Computer -> to Mobile -> Computer" is recommended neither.So what should I do to make this problem/question a "change request" ?
We are talking about desktop software. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement something like:- Stopping the sync service when showing the first message after program start. The user may decide about changing the configuration or just leave it as it is till next time.
- Just a check box on the configuration form "no action if sync folder is offline"
Being back online again everything would just continue to work as configured.
Kai
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Hi @KaiL,
It's a little more complicated than it'd sound like, unfortunately. I'd love for us to do better here though, it'll just take some elbow grease.
You're not out of options though. You can do a Folder Sync to a local folder, then use some sync tool (there are tons out there, I'm a unix geek so I'd end up just doing something via rsync, probably), to sync the local folder onto the NAS. This way 1Password can always sync to the local folder. And you give the job of syncing to the NAS over to another tool that won't be as sensitive about it as 1Password currently is. It's not a pretty solution, but it works, we've helped users set it up before.
I hope this helps.
Rick
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bummer. syncing to a network folder should really be supported! How is it supposed to share a vault within a small team in case we are not allowed to use a cloud service with 1Password? using rsync to sync the network to a local folder and specifying that as the 1Password sync destination would get us into trouble in case there are multiple simultaneous or conflicting changes, I assume?
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You would be correct @tmb but depending on what you mean by simultaneous that would be true of all the syncing methods available, both cloud and local. 1Password hasn't been designed with say a database level of interactions in mind where depending on usage they make be expected to copy with hundreds of queries and changes per second and use concepts such as atomic changes.
On reason to be quite careful when performing a local network sync is in the case of both Dropbox and iCloud it handles conflicts for us. We understand how Dropbox handles conflicts and use this knowledge. What we can't account for are the variety of different 3rd party sync tools so yes, there is an element of caution required.
I realise it isn't what you want to hear, and maybe not possible in your situation but Dropbox really would be the best solution for a small team all making frequent alterations to a vault. The client is responsive to local changes handles conflicts in a known way to 1Password.
How large is this small team and how often are there changes made to the shared vault?
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thanks for taking care, @littlebobbytables (great name, btw). The small team in our case would consist of just 4 members and there are not many changes to the vault, maybe one or two per day. So the chance of actual conflicts within the vault is little and concurrent changes to the same items should not be much of an issue. I was thinking of concurrent changes to the vault in total - now that I investigate how a vault is constructed, I see this is actually an Bundle in the filesystem, so changes should only affect individual files therein.
While we are usually connected to the same LAN with the Fileserver, all of us happen to be offline sometimes and should be able to sync local and remote changes that happened since then. As said - the biggest issue with the current solution is the annoying error message from the Finder every few minutes, see: https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/153876/#Comment_1538760 -
Hi @tmb,
Okay, that doesn't sound like conflicts should be a massive issue then and as you've found, our sync format (both .agilekeychain and .opvault) are bundles rather than single encrypted files. Such a system would have placed all the sync issues directly on 1Password where as I said earlier, we lean on the conflict resolution of the cloud services.
The thread you linked to of course relates to the desire to directly write to the .agilekeychain with it being hosted on a fileserver. The reason we've advocated 3rd party sync tools such as rsync and ChronoSync (just two of so very many I'm sure) is to try and mimic the situation 1Password expects, where there is the local copy which 1Password will write to and then a service that handles those changes between the local copy and the server. Folder Sync was originally designed with pen drives in mind, something I wasn't always aware of myself and that's part of the reason why it doesn't behave quite as well with mounted shares as OS X treats them differently. The bug report for improved share handling does remain open though.
ref: OPM-1814
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