1Password Teams and Deep Freeze

jlinczak

I have not attempted this yet, but it's possible you guys may know the answer to this already. We have several PCs in our business that are using Faronics DeepFreeze to ensure that the configuration of the machine stays the same after reboot. Things that do not need to change (like a person's bookmarks, email file, etc.) are stored on a network share in a standard location or in a "thawed" drive on the PC that DeepFreeze allows to be changed by the user or an app.

Oftentimes, apps have a local data store of content that we must configure when we install the apps to change that default location to one of these thawed drives or network drives to make things work properly. Do you know if this is going to be a consideration for 1Password as well (in other words, if someone logs in to 1Password, adds passwords, then reboots and every file goes back to the way it was at the time we froze the machine's configuration) or is everything stored in the cloud? Hopefully this makes sense.

---

1Password Version: 6
Extension Version: X
OS Version: Windows 7
Sync Type: AgileBits

MikeT

Hi @jlinczak,

Thanks for writing in.

1Password keeps a local cache of the database that the 1Password.com servers will update automatically as soon as you sign in.

1Password stores all of the user's configuration and the data in a local database directory that you can keep thawed here: %localappdata%\1Password\data.

The app files are also stored in the same parent directory, %localappdata%\1Password\app\6\. You can just keep 1Password directory thawed with no issues, this means it doesn't have third party dependency or registry requirements when you reset to previous frozen state.

If you only keep the data directory thawed, the only potential issue is that if you keep the old 1Password app in the snapshot and we release an update that migrates the data into a newer database structure, reverting later may cause issues where the user has an old app that doesn't understand how to read the new database structure.

jlinczak

Ah, I see what you mean. My next question was going to ask if we can change the local database directory to another location, either through an MSI installer configuration, or just changing the registry entry after the fact, but I see where doing so either way doesn't matter if we they end up doing the upgrade. Duly noted - thank you for the quick (and thorough!) response!

jlinczak

Actually, along the same lines for Deep Freeze, we have a teams account and will be creating the rest of the accounts for everyone. Given everyone's machine is frozen, outside of deploying the app frozen and logging each person in before freezing again, is there a means of installing each with the right account info? We're a small shop, so I don't care if we have to do it manually, but just wanted to know if there's a better way of deploying that automatically or not.

MikeT

Hi @jlinczak,

You can change the database directory in the JSON file that's stored in the app directory: AgileBits.OnePassword.Desktop.json

In there, there's the path value that you can change to a network share or wherever you want to store the database file in.

In fact, you could create a portable version of 1Password like this; copy the app folder, put the two sqlite files in the same folder and change the path to something like this:

"database": {
        "path": "./test.sqlite"
    },

We are looking into the possibility in letting you use the JSON file to add a predefined values for the 1Password account URL and account name, so the user can add the account key/password on their own. Would this work for you?

jlinczak

Ah, nice! Right now, there are no roaming profiles or shared machines, but if there were to be in the future, could the JSON database path institute a variable so that the app is installed centrally but depending on the profile logged in (and environmental variables) that the database is searched in the local place?

I do think adding the account URL and account name would be convenient, and if the account name would be variable using profile information, I think that would be even better!

I am still a newbie with Windows administration, so let me know if this doesn't seem like a reasonable request.

MikeT

Hi @jlinczak,

could the JSON database path institute a variable so that the app is installed centrally but depending on the profile logged in (and environmental variables) that the database is searched in the local place?

Yes, that should be doable. The default path already includes a variable to use the %localappdata% path.

We'll see if we can support parsing the the profile name as the default account name. If the user has a different name, they can change it on the fly before signing in.

jlinczak

Lovely, thanks @MikeT! Really appreciate the quick support!

MikeT

You're welcome.

If there's anything else we can do to help, please let us know.