[4.5 b57] Dropbox sync reverted entry to old password [Fixed in beta 60]

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spyder
spyder
Community Member
edited April 2014 in iOS

Earlier today (before b58 came out) I updated to b57 and, since I hadn't used it in a few betas, went through the process of reconnecting Dropbox sync. It seemed to get stuck after a while, so I moved on to other stuff (i.e. it would have probably been terminated after 10 minutes in the background).

I just went to log in to a site on my mac, and 1password had reverted to my previous password. I changed it maybe a couple of weeks ago (clearly sometime between the last time the beta synced and today). The beta overwrote my new password with the old one - thankfully it kept the old password as a history entry.

I instinctively deleted the app to prevent any further corruption and redownloaded it before I realised the logs could have been useful, but to be honest I've been upgrading betas for quite a while now so it's possible someone upgrading direct from the 4.3.2 release won't have any problems. Still, I thought it was worth mentioning.

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  • Thanks for the report @spyder‌ ! Just to clarify, 1Password reverted one of your item's passwords, correct? Not your Master Password. If you notice this happen again please check out the logs for us.

  • spyder
    spyder
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    Yes, the iphone app beta reverted changes I had made to login passwords on the mac app, not the master password.

    I was pretty sure I had updated more than one password since the last time using the beta, but the mac app showed no other recent modifications - however later today I found another password entry had been reset. That's much more concerning, that things have changed but the modification date is months in the past when the original password was set.

    Dropbox shows a ton of changes from the point where this happened, I'll see if I can use that to track down which entries might have been reset.

  • @spyder Thanks for the report, we have been able to replicate this issue internally and are working on a fix.

  • Fedorov
    Fedorov
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    Out of curiosity and concern I guess @MrRooni‌ - is this a specific set of circumstances with Mac and iOS versions or could it affect me with the Windows client too? Thanks

  • MrRooni
    edited April 2014
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    @Fedorov‌ This one appears to happen if you have Dropbox syncing set up, period. It doesn't seem to matter if you're syncing with Mac or Windows on the other end.

  • Fedorov
    Fedorov
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    @MrRooni‌ scary one if it's reverting old passwords, glad to hear you've found it and no doubt a fix imminent.
    Not seen it myself but always nice to know when you've found a bad one :)

  • spyder
    spyder
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    I have confirmed that a lot of other passwords have been reset. In the period I wasn't using the beta I updated quite a lot of old re-used passwords to ones generated by 1password.

    The only thing stopping me from getting angry now is that every single case has the new password in the password history, from the date and time the reversions happened. I just wish the mac app showed them as modified on that date! That seems like a bug!

  • spyder
    spyder
    Community Member
    edited April 2014
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    It turns out the vast majority of the dropbox changes were just rewriting JSON data in the .1password files - same content, different ordering. Impossible to easily determine which entries had the password reverted and which were simple rewrites.

    I didn't think I had a backup due to excluding the Dropbox folder from Time Machine, so it was going to take me hours to revert all of the files. Then I realised that I haven't run SuperDuper since the issue happened so I was able to get my old keychain back. It's good to have backups :)

    I've deleted and reinstalled both iOS versions (release and beta) of 1p in order to not risk corrupting the data again.

    Through all of this, I had forgotten that 1p 4 on Mac doesn't use the Dropbox keychain directly, it syncs to it. This explains why my old passwords were still available as history entries, and why now that I've reverted the keychain 1p 4 doesn't show any difference in the UI (entries I manually fixed still show a modification date later than the copy in Dropbox).

    I definitely think the modification date in 1p 4 on Mac is a bit broken, but other than that I'm back to business as usual.

  • Fedorov
    Fedorov
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    For peace of mind may I just ask if the actual fix for this which you said you managed to replicate is due in the next beta. I get the impression that once we know this is fixed then all the Dropbox sync issues are almost gone at present

  • Thanks for the additional information @spyder, that helps a lot. Glad you had some stable backups of your data!

  • spyder
    spyder
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    I wouldn't be a good beta tester if I didn't have stable backups ;)

    I was just so worried about finding the bogus entries (some of the changes were re-adding deleted attachments) that for a while there I forgot I follow the "three copies, one off site" rule. At worst I would have realised during my weekly backup rotation on Friday.

  • Good stuff. :)

    We think that beta 60 resolves this problem. Please put it through its paces and let me know what you find. Thanks!

  • spyder
    spyder
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    I haven't seen any more sync issues, but I would like to add that I miss the sync progress bar from the current release. With latency to Dropbox from Australia it can take quite a long time to do a full sync and now all we get is "in progress".

    Not that I do a full sync very often, but what happens if I exit the app while it's syncing? Will it keep going in the background or stop and continue later? I don't trust it enough yet to let it do partial sync :)

  • MikeT
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    Hi @spyder,

    That's great, thank you for your help on this, and for the feedback on the loading bar.

    We do plan to work on making the sync progress more obvious, maybe have a better and cooler progress bar than the current 4.3 one.

    We are just a bit raw right now because we're focusing on the main core features before we polish up the interface. There is no point of having a pretty design if it doesn't work. :)

    but what happens if I exit the app while it's syncing? Will it keep going in the background or stop and continue later? I don't trust it enough yet to let it do partial sync

    We don't support background syncing yet, that may happen in the future. Right now, as you exit the app, the app will clean up and stop its sync. 1Password on both sides is smart enough (without the bugs of course) to know what's changed on both sides to avoid duplicating or overwriting your data when you resume the app and sync again.

    Syncing in 1Password is supposed to be transparent, so many folks would exit the 1Password app regardless of what it is doing, so we make sure that regardless of what happens, it should be safe to do so.

    I know you don't trust the partial sync right now but it's best to do a backup now with the Mac app, and then go crazy with it. It's best to find the bugs now, fix it, and ensure the sync is working the way it should. We'd really appreciate if you can do that for us.

  • spyder
    spyder
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    We do plan to work on making the sync progress more obvious, maybe have a better and cooler progress bar than the current 4.3 one.

    Fair enough. I just wanted to highlight it after the build notes said rc0 would be released to the App store if no issues were found :)

    I know you don't trust the partial sync right now but it's best to do a backup now with the Mac app, and then go crazy with it. It's best to find the bugs now, fix it, and ensure the sync is working the way it should. We'd really appreciate if you can do that for us.

    Of course, I should've realised that. And hey there's another backup option I had forgotten about when I had my corruption issue. So many backups, hard to keep track of them all!

    The biggest, slowest thing I can think of is the initial sync after installing the app. My keychain file is 20mb with 2400 files in it. I'll try that a few times and exit the app at various points in the process.

  • spyder
    spyder
    Community Member
    edited April 2014
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    wow, thanks for reminding me about the 1p Mac backups. As I said earlier, restoring my keychain in dropbox didn't trigger any updates in the mac app; it turns out that it had picked up the extra files incorrectly restored by the corrupt sync and not removed them when I fixed it. I still had 538 items there instead of 398.

    All restored now!

  • MikeT
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    Hi @Spyder,

    You're welcome! I'm glad you got it restored properly now. If everything is properly set up in the Mac app, I'd strongly suggest going to the File Menu > Backup in 1Password to create a fresh backup. It'll then let you know specifically which backup was just created and you'll know which one to restore back to. However, please don't restore right away when you do face a bug because we might need the diagnostics information from the app before you restore.

    Now, that everything is restored properly, hopefully, the sync is also working great between both apps, including increment syncs.

    Please do us know how it is going.

  • spyder
    spyder
    Community Member
    edited April 2014
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    Right now, as you exit the app, the app will clean up and stop its sync.

    When I exit during the initial sync, after I come back it says failed to download file from Dr... (Dropbox is cut off a bit due to the new font). The sync continues as normal, but as I moved back and forth to safari a few times while writing this post the list of errors built up.

    When I let it finish, the count was 3 short. I hit sync now and it was still one short - also when I returned to the main setting screen it was stuck on "syncing" with the spinning icon. Closing the app didn't help that, I had to force quit and reload before it figured out what was going on and then the item count was correct.

    All using rc1, didn't get a chance to test rc0.

    No changes were recorded in Dropbox during this process, which is nice. Fresh sync worked in b57 though, it was upgrading that caused issues.

  • Thanks so much for the report, @spyder. I will be sure we evaluate this one today.

  • spyder
    spyder
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    I've re run initial sync a few times now. The failed to download report seems replicable, but perhaps only when exiting early in the sync process. I just hit it then exiting when it had only synced 25, but earlier I was attempting to let it complete in one go and my 1 minute lock screen timeout kicked in around 200 but didn't trigger the error.

    The issue where the sync setting gets stuck on "syncing" after initial sync has replicated every time so far.

    About the only thing I haven't tried is force quit during sync but I'm not sure that would make a difference :)

  • spyder
    spyder
    Community Member
    edited April 2014
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    After my tests this morning, I loaded up 1p an hour or two later and saw the attached message.

    This evening I reconnected sync, and while the last sync entry says "in progress" the main settings page didn't change to syncing with the spinning icon. It did eventually finish and everything seems normal - I won't delete the beta app again until I know if you need the logs.

    [edit] there are quite a few change events in Dropbox. I'm on my phone so I can't easily check whether it's just json data reordering or something more serious. I'll report back in the morning.

  • Thank you @spyder, please do keep us in the loop. If you'd like to send in your logs can you send them to me at mrrooni@agilebits.com. Thanks!

  • spyder
    spyder
    Community Member
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    The dropbox changes are significant, again. The passwords don't appear to have changed, despite the encrypted field changing, but 1p on Mac now reports 444 items up from 398. I've just emailed you.

  • Got it, thanks.

This discussion has been closed.