Local Sync doesn't work as expected

syncseeker

Hey!

I wanted to use the sync feature (Sync folder) in order to keep two macs in sync. I am not allowed to use online storage services for that purpose so that I had the following idea:

Use a keychain on my MacBook Pro (10.10, 1Pwd 5.3) and use a keychain on my Mac Pro (10.10, 1Pwd 5.3) and copy a third keychain to a thunderbolt drive both devices share. This works as expected as long as the drive is always accessible for both devices when powered on.

As you can imagine, one often works on both devices simultaneously and only one can have access to the drive at a time. The real problem is: 1Password doesn't wait for the drive to appear some time in the future but simply refuses to sync and tells me about an error. After having clicked "ignore" it deletes the sync folder option in the 1Password settings and sets it to "None".

Is it possible to make 1Password not as restrictive as it is at the moment? Could you change that behaviour in the source code? I'm sure many people don't have the possibility to always make the folder with the synced keychain accessible.

Thanks in advance!

littlebobbytables

Hi @syncseeker,

I've had very informative chats with one of the developers here in the past and one thing I learnt from one of these chats is that if the storage device is treated as a removable storage device by OS X then it should behave as you're hoping for. So I'm wondering, do you experience the same issue if you were to use a small flash drive? I don't own a thunderbolt drive to test with but I suspect OS X is treating it differently compared to a pen drive. How would you feel about using a pen drive for your Folder Syncing?

syncseeker

Hey @littlebobbytables,

thanks for your answer. The thunderbolt drive is removable for the system. Is it of interest that it's not a real physical drive but a RAID system combining two physical independent drives within the same case?

I am going to test the sync feature with a little flash drive. Hopefully it works that way.

Thanks again :-)

littlebobbytables

Hi @syncseeker,

It is very possible that even though you can eject such a drive, if OS X is controlling the RAID aspect it might be treating it more as a fixed drive than a removable one.

If you're comfortable with Terminal at all (I can give more precise details if you're not) then there is a command you might find interesting.

• diskutil list will list all of the drives attached to you Mac.
• diskutil info [device path] will supply a lot of information on a particular device.

e.g. I pop one of my pen drives in and then I use the following command diskutil info /Volumes/KINGSTON and it supplies a whole bunch of information including certain tidbits such as

Ejectable:                Yes

Whole:                    No
Internal:                 No

So I'm curious as to what it reports when you plug in your Thunderbolt RAID. I do think we'll find a difference in how OS X treats these and that will explain it. It might be this particular command isn't enough to elicit this information but it's a place to start.

Let us know how you find syncing with a flash drive as it works for me. One thing not to worry about, if the pen drive isn't plugged in don't worry if 1Password says you're not syncing. Just plug in the pen drive and then check :smile:

syncseeker

Hey again @littlebobbytables,

my drive says

Read-Only Media: No
Read-Only Volume: No
Ejectable: Yes

as well as

Whole: Yes
Internal: No
Solid State: No

Regarding the little flash drive I use for syncing now: It works perfectly. Absolutely no problems with this solutions so that I think I am going to keep it this way. Thanks again for your help :-)

littlebobbytables

Glad to hear the little flash drive is a good alternative to the Thunderbolt drive. It looks like diskutil isn't supplying enough information, I'll have to ask the devs about that one. Glad you've found something that works for you @syncseeker :smile: