After upgrading to 6.8.6, I can't find 1Password keychain or vault

Nekoninda
Nekoninda
Community Member

One of my family account members, using my stand-alone app purchased from the AgileBits site from the days before subscriptions, is having problems after upgrading to version 6.8.6. She lives in another city, so I cannot see the computer. She noticed recently, that the 1Password icon wasn't showing up in her menu bar anymore. Talking by phone, we installed Apple updates to El Capitan. Then we downloaded the current 1Password installer, 6.8.6, and started the setup process. It asked her if she was a new user or not (I forget the exact words). Then it asked if she syncs using Dropbox, iCloud, or (I think) 1Password.com. I would have guessed that it was setup with Dropbox, but when she clicked that choice, 1Password said that it couldn't find the password file. We tried iCloud, and 1Password reported that the computer wasn't connected to iCloud. We tried connecting to iCloud through System Preferences, and it appears that she has never set up an iCloud account. We tried to browse the Mac, and 1Password said it couldn't find the password file. We searched for files named 1Password in a Finder window, and didn't come up with a file that ended in "keychain". So, within the 1Password setup screen, we tried the third choice, which I think was 1Password.com. This suggested that she scan something in. We didn't know how to proceed. I don't know if this is even an option with the standalone family license that we have. If it is an option, we couldn't figure out how to use it. Might her 1Password data be stored in the Apple Keychain?

She knows her master password. We have the license file installed on her computer in Applications, with the 1Password App version 6.86. We don't know how she was syncing her passwords, if at all, and where the passwords were stored. The version of 1Password in the Applications folder is now 6.8.6. Everything was working until quite recently. She was able to open 1Password and find all of her stored passwords, until upgrading to 6.8.6. What steps can we take to finish the setup process, find her password file, and restore functionality? She has backups, both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.

For what it is worth, I am running 6.8.6 on my Mac, using the same family license. I'm syncing using Dropbox.


1Password Version: 6.8.6
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 10.11.6
Sync Type: Not Provided

Comments

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Nekoninda - sorry for the trouble with your relative's upgrading process. 1Password hasn't used the system keychain since version 2, which was a VERY long time ago. Can I ask why you downloaded the full installer if she was already updated to 6.8.6? Previously, had she used the in-app updater to go from whatever version she was using before to 6.8.6? Can you tell us what version of 1Password she upgraded from?

    Probably the best way we're going to be able to help you is if you have your friend write in to us at support@agilebits.com and summarize the problem for us directly, instead of using you as a message-relayer. We'll be able to get diagnostics reports from her device, ask questions directly and get answers, and solve her problem more quickly than if we have to take up your time going back and forth through you. You can have her include a link to this discussion when she writes in, if you or she feels that would be helpful. Thanks!

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Nekoninda - fair enough! If she's been using a version that's two years or less old, then that would still be 1Password 6 for Mac. As such, her options would have been:

    1. A 1password.com account (which you say isn't the case, as you're all using 1Password in Standalone mode with local data)
    2. No sync at all
    3. Dropbox
    4. iCloud
    5. WLAN (Wi-Fi).

    WLAN would only be an option if she had other actual devices to sync with, as the 1Password for Mac app acts as a WLAN server, and mobile devices act as clients, whereas with iCloud or Dropbox, you sync not with other devices directly, but with a keychain in "the cloud," which can then be synced to by other devices. If she was using either Dropbox or iCloud, you should be able to have her start 1Password for Mac and, at the Welcome screen, choose either of those methods to sync -- if nothing is found by 1Password, then that probably means she wasn't using that method.

    What's bothering me, however, is that if she was using 1Password for Mac 6.0 or higher (which would be: last two years), then installing a new version should, upon launching the update, simply return you to the lock screen to enter your Master Password. Updating or even deleting entirely the older app doesn't delete the data associated with it unless you or she used an app cleaners or uninstaller to do it. These utilities can remove more data than we want them to (such as your 1Password data). Do you happen to know if that's what was used?

    If there are Time Machine AND CCC backups, you should be able to go back to the most-recent date prior to the upgrade and recover the data. It's located at: ~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Data/OnePassword.sqlite. Restoring that to its location within the new Mac should allow you to access the data using her existing Master Password. Let us know how that goes for you!

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Nekoninda -- If she was syncing between two Macs, then it was not using WLAN (because that's not possible). If you can recover her data by simply "bootstrapping" it from the existing sync service (Dropbox or iCloud), then that's by far the easiest way, rather than mucking around with Time Machine copies of SQLite files in the Library. Also, if the copy of her data is A) accessible and B) complete and up-to-date on her other Mac, then you could have her sync to Dropbox or iCloud, even if she wasn't previously, and then sync to that keychain on the new Mac.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Nekoninda

    I'm pretty sure she used Migration Assistant to get all her data onto the new one. Perhaps she has never done syncing of 1Password data, but just began using the new Mac with a copy of the previous password file. If so, that file would have started out identical, and become less similar, over time, when she modified one copy of the password file, or the other.

    Yup -- in fact, this is why Migration Assistant is one of my least-preferred ways to get your 1Password data in particular from one Mac to another. It's great for other things, but for just the reason you outlined, it can cause some real problems with 1Password.

    can you direct me to documents that would help us 1) merge the two possibly divergent versions of her password file that we may find on the two computers, and 2) set up syncing from today forward, using Dropbox in an intelligent way.

    I'd be happy to! I'm afraid that for the first part of that request (the merging), there's no elegant way to do that. There's the manual way - which would involve comparing data "by hand" and making any edits/adjustments to one (or the other) copy of the 1Password data, until one of them was complete and up-to-date (and then using that one as the "master" and deleting the other one). That's likely to be the least-risky way to do it, because it forces the user to think about what changes have been made, and which is the correct one.

    A faster and more automated way to go about it would be to follow these illustrated instructions to sync first one of the copies with Dropbox, then the other. Before you attempted such a thing, I'd go into 1Password for Mac on each Mac, into Preferences > Backups and make a manual backup of the current state of the data -- just in case anything goes truly wrong. Then proceed with the Dropbox sync instructions at the link above. On the second one, this will cause a merge warning to appear, which you'd accept. Then you'd have a combined file of both versions. 1Password is VERY conservative with your data in such circumstances; if it can't figure out which version of a file should be the "winner," (i.e. - newest changes), it will copy the changes from both versions into a merged item which will then require manual cleanup that way. Either way, it's likely to not be either quick or elegant. That's the unavoidable news. The good news is that once she's got a single vault with her "cleaned" data and Dropbox sync set up, it works pretty smoothly from there on out.

This discussion has been closed.