Suggestion for Updates [Multiple copies of 1Password unsupported due to limitations in macOS]

romad

For some reason, every time I go to download an update, I'm told I should delete 1Password from my Carbon Copy Cloner clone of my iMac hard drive. This is annoying because it DEFEATS the purpose to have a clone of your primary drive. I just ignore this message but figure it would be better if the update process just lists the location of all copies of 1Pwd it finds and let the owner CHOOSE which one they want to up date. Alternately, perhaps the update process could ignore clones just as it ignores all the 1Pwd copies in my Time Machine backups (Thank God!).

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1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided

rudy

@romad,

Unfortunately the problem that you're encountering has nothing to do with the updater, its going to always update the copy it came from.

The problem is when the updater finishes, the version of the helper process that launchd launches is not deterministic. It can and will regularly pick one of those other copies to launch. Where this becomes a problem is when the versions don't match exactly and we've changed something in the interface the helper and the main application use to communicate. When that happens you will definitely see one or both of those processes crash, possibly over and over and over again.

This isn't something that's solvable without Apple improving their API around SMSetLoginItemEnabled() fairly substantially.

Rudy

romad

Rudy, does the updater check the trash for a copy? If not, then maybe I could move the clone 1Pwd to the trash, then restore it after an update has been applied to the copy on my iMac's drive.

rudy

@romad,

The trash could possibly work, though that would really be up to how launchd treats Trash folders on volumes other than the boot volume. Its possible that it doesn't make the distinction between Trash on a non-boot volume and a regular folder.

Rudy

danco

Best practice is not to keep a copy of 1PW on the clone. The data is stored separately, and will and should be cloned.

But unless you are regularly booting from the clone, you don't need the program itself. You can always just have a zipped version available for unzipping if needed. Or, for that matter, download the program again when wanted.

And it is easy to set Carbon Copy Cloner (or SuperDuper, and probably other cloners) not to copy 1PW.

Ben

Good points, @danco. :)

Ben

xz4gb8

Ben,
Another view of best practice, assuming your clone is bootable, is to simply dismount (eject) the backup volume while making application changes like updating 1Password. The backup volume will mount automatically upon next login and may be manually mounted using Disk Utility -- Select the backup volume and click Mount. With a USB-connected backup drive, mounting of the backup volume happens automatically as the drive is connected and powered.

Best practice is that a bootable backup volume should be an exact copy of the original. This is crucial to rapid failure recovery. Messing with the contents of the backup manually using anything other than a program like CCC or SuperDuper! is error prone and, if you support anybody else (as I do). is guaranteed to be error prone to an excessive degree. In addition, many applications, including macOS Launch Services and many software updaters, will produce unpredictable results when multiple identical copies of applications or documents exist as happens when an original volume and a backup clone of the original are both mounted.

Teaching a user to dismount a backup volume works with essentially everyone and every OS, even Windows. Establishing the habit of ejecting (and, possibly, disconnecting) backup volumes and drives while doing any major software or hardware changes is key to long data life and easy recovery.

Lars

@xz4gb8 - thanks for the excellent follow-up points. You're quite right, unmounting drives with backup copies on them prior to upgrading is a good method of making sure you don't run afoul of this issue.

chascotton

Why don't you update the dialog box to allow us to choose which copy to update or to exclude all copies not on the main drive? Unmounting and remounting the CCC backup drive is a genuine PITA. Just thinbkin'

Lars

@chascotton - it doesn't really work that way; we don't (can't) control which copy gets updated; the OS does. That's also why we recommend against more than one copy installed at a time -- because launchd will simply pick the first copy of the mini it finds, and use it...whether it's the one from the same bundle or not.