Multiple vaults shared between Mac and Windows

camner

My 1P setup is as follows:

1. The Macs in the house all use the same 1P vault (mine) which is synced via Dropbox. Changes made to this primary vault sync virtually instantly to all the Macs (presumably because Dropbox notices the change in the 1Password.agilekeychain file.

2. My wife has a Windows 7 PC, and has her 1P vault in her Dropbox on her PC (which has a different Dropbox account than mine).

3. My wife shares her 1Password folder with me, which appears in my Dropbox folder with the foldername 1Password(1)

I have no trouble accessing her vault from within 1P on any Mac

Earlier today my wife added a new login item on her PC. It is not showing up on the Macs. In fact, none of the changes she has made in the past few months (July) are showing up on the Macs. YET, when I look inside the 1Password(1) folder to her vault file, Open Package Contents, and drill down until I get the individual xxxx.1Password files, and order by date modified, I see all the files that were created since July. In fact, the contents of that folder seem identical to the corresponding folder on her PC.

It appears all the data is there, but for some reason 1P on the Macs isn't picking up the changes even though the vault package seems to contain the appropriate data.

I have tried quitting and reopening 1P, but that does not seem to make a difference.

When I examine the file contents.js on the Macs and scroll down to the bottom, I see entries for "webforms" for the missing login items. So, I'm convinced all the data is there on the Macs, but the 1P app (and 1P mini) don't seem to show these items.

Quite odd!

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1Password Version: 5.3.2
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OS X 10.10.5
Sync Type: Dropbox

camner

Hmmm...problem solved! Somehow Dropbox syncing had been turned off on the Macs. Perhaps happened during one of the updates/upgrades? Apparently no syncing had been taking place to the Macs since late July. All seems to be well.

thightower

@camner

Tip for you. You can rename the shared folder from your wife if you wish using your account. Dropbox allows the name to be changed on your end to be more descriptive to you only (on shared folders between 2 separate Dropbox accounts). So you could name it "1PasswordfromSpouse" for example. I would stay away from special characters since it may play havoc with the different os's syncing. The name change will be local to you only, on her end it will remain the same. You may have to specify the new folder in the 1Password sync preferences for such a change or It may pick it up automatically. So please check your syncing preferences to be sure.

If you do rename it, then it would allow you to have a more clearly ordered Dropbox. For those of us whom need strict order or there OCD goes bonkers its a major plus. Whistles loudly. :)

There is no real need to do it simply putting it out there. Its entirely functional as is without any need for change.

*Reminder : This only applies to shared folders between 2 separate accounts.

You would need to verify the settings on all devices, to be sure and you may not wish to go to all this trouble. If so simply carry on as if I didn't post this. You can always tweak it later etc if you so choose.

camner

Yikes! Not all is well! When turning back on syncing I had no choice but to select Merge and now I have duplicate entries of most of my software licenses, though not of my login items.

OK, so how do I recover from this? I restored from a backup from yesterday on one of the Macs, which fixed the duplicate entries, but that won't propagate to the other Macs 1Passwords. I know Dropbox is syncing files correctly, because outside of 1P I can modify or create or delete files within the Dropbox folder and have them show up instantly on the other Macs. And, again, the files in the agilekeychain appear to be the same (at least they have the same names and the same number of files in the Data folder).

thightower

@camner

Was this issue related to the name change I mentioned ? If so I have never seen that happen before. I have done this repeatedly on my system and with other in the Dropbox forums without issue.

I suspect the issue was due to long sync delays inside the keychain. From the time sync was off on the Macs. (Your original issue) Dropbox may have been creating conflicted copies etc.

Dropbox has been known to cause such havoc when syncing has been turned off for a period of time. Its one of the reasons I strive to never let my syncing go beyond a few days before I re enable the client, allowing it to sync changes.

camner

No, I didn't change the name as you suggested (yet) because I didn't see the post before realizing the problem. I'm not going to do anything with the name change idea until I straighten out the mess.

I didn't intentionally turn off syncing...somehow it "just happened." I'm speculating it may have had to do with some upgrade or another. While not frequent, I find that OS updates and sometimes even software updates result in preference settings going a bit haywire.

BUT, now the question is how to fix it? I was able to restore from a backup on my main Mac, but that did not propagate to the other Macs (for some reason, the issue only seems to occur with software licenses, not logins, which did not duplicate...then again, the software licenses were all created AFTER the syncing was turned off).

One idea I had was to do this on the other Macs:
1. Turn off Dropbox syncing
2. uninstall 1Password and delete the agilekeychain
3. reinstall 1Password
4. turn back on Dropbox syncing

Is this overkill? Should it work?

littlebobbytables

Hi @camner,

Backups are an extremely useful feature but if you have multiple copies of 1Password that sync then because of the decentralised approach there isn't an easy one-click button that will allow you to revert all copies to a previous state. Each copy is completely autonomous.

The easiest way to restore a backup is to start on that Mac and restore. That disables sync because otherwise you'd end up right back at the same place when the sync updates the restored vault. As you want to push this slightly older copy of the vault everywhere else your thoughts are pretty much spot on.

1. Restore the backup on Mac A.
2. Delete your Agile Keychain as we need a new one based on the now restored Mac A.
3. Enable Dropbox Sync on Mac A and have it create a new Agile Keychain in the same location as the old one.
4. Start over everywhere else using this guide for Macs and this guide for iOS devices. Please note this will remove all vaults in each copy of 1Password as you're starting from scratch,
5. Set up 1Password as an existing user using this guide for Mac and this guide for iOS. Please make sure it picks your Agile Keychain and not your wife's as it won't be able to easily distinguish one from the other - it will see two Agile Keychains titled 1Password.agilekeychain.

That should see things corrected and the restored backup from Mac A now present everywhere. I am sorry this has happened to you and should you need further assistance in correcting this all we will be here to help.

camner

Thanks very much for the step by step. A couple of followup questions....

Any ideas about how/why the software licenses ended up with duplicates but none of the login (or items) did?

If restoring from a backup turns off syncing, shouldn't there be a warning somewhere in the restore process that says, "By the way, if you're syncing, you won't be after you finish with the restore process...you'll need to manually turn back on syncing"?

Drew_AG

Hi @camner,

On behalf of littlebobbytables, you're very welcome! Sorry it took us longer than usual to get back to you. I'm afraid I don't know why only software licenses were duplicated. For some reason, when you re-enabled Dropbox sync, 1Password saw those items on your Mac as being different/separate items from the ones in Dropbox, even though they had the same data. The only thing I can think of is that, during the time that vault on your Mac wasn't syncing with Dropbox, if you or your wife had made copies of those Software License items and removed the originals, the copies would have different UUIDs than the originals, so 1Password would see them as different/separate items.

Now, that's complete speculation, and I have no idea if that's what happened - I'm sure there are other things that would lead to the duplicates, but that's an example that comes to mind. Normally you shouldn't end up with duplicates, and I'd be surprised if that happened to you again in the future. In the years that I've been using 1Password and Dropbox sync, I've disabled & re-enabled sync many, many times and haven't had a problem like that, so it's certainly unusual. I'm sorry I don't have a more concrete idea of what caused that to happen for you!

You're right, it's probably a good idea to make it more obvious that vault sync settings aren't restored along with the vault data. Perhaps we can add a warning about that in the future. I'm sorry for the confusion! If you have more questions or need anything else, please let us know - we're here for you! :)

camner

Thanks for the followup.

Another feature possibility would be to allow for the option, after restoring, of having the restored version served as a "master" copy that overrides the later versions on other devices that are currently syncing, much the way Xmarks allows for that in bookmark management. When I thought about how long it would take to reset all my devices to "new" in terms of 1P and let it resync, I shuddered and decided it would take less time to manually delete all the duplicate entries (I had about 250) and let those deletions sync across all machines/devices.

And, your speculation may be correct. While the dropbox syncing was off, I did delete all the software licenses and then reimport them from a LicenseKeeper export. What I DON'T understand is why any other device would have had the "pre deleted" versions, since I did all that work on one machine, and Dropbox syncing was off for the entire time I was working on the software licenses.

littlebobbytables

Hello @camner,

I can't say I know Xmarks. When you restore does it just know that you want this to overwrite everywhere or you do you instruct it somehow? While it worked out okay as a sync container the Agile Keychain wasn't designed specifically with syncing in mind. It was originally designed to be the vault container and then repurposed when we shifted to the current implementation. It also meant we could continue working with 1Password 3.

camner

When you restore an earlier version of the bookmarks, this newly restored version is pushed to the cloud automatically. The next time Xmarks goes to sync on a different machine it says that it has detected that the cloud version contains a bookmarks version set with a earlier time stamp than the time stamp on the current machine and prompts to choose between having the cloud version overwrite the local version, have the local version overwrite the cloud version, or merge the two.

I'm not sure I would implement this for 1Password exactly the way Xmarks works, for a couple of reasons, but it does show the possibilities.

Drew_AG

Thanks @camner, we appreciate your suggestion & the additional information on how you'd like to see that work! We can certainly forward that to our developers (although I can't say for sure if/when something like that would be implemented).

Please let us know if you need anything else. :)

camner

I'm really not asking that you do this...it's just an idea.

I suppose what might make a difference is how often your customer base runs into an issue of a corrupt agile keychain or some other glitch that requires a restore. If it is a truly low probability event, then it most likely isn't worth the time and effort to make the restore process more robust. On the other hand, if it happens not often but not rarely either, when a restore IS necessary, there would be a lot of goodwill in "This doesn't happen often, but we can make this process a little easier for you."

Thanks for your responsiveness!

Vee_AG

Hi @camner,

Excellent points, and well taken. Thanks for your thoughtful suggestions! :)