Wi-Fi Sync between OS X?
Hello forum,
After this:
and this:
I finally decided I need 1Password :)
I use the Mac App Store (MAS) version 4 since 3 days, together with the latest available iOS version (4.2.7 I believe). I also have the "USB Sync Tool" installed on OS X 10.8.5.
Here is my first question: Will there be Wi-Fi sync between OS X and OS X (not iOS!)?
Even though I trust the encryption of the 1Password key chain file I do not want to use any external cloud service (neither iCloud nor Dropbox) for now. So my current setup is:
- For the desktop app, use "Folder Sync"
The folder is located on a network share (Synology NAS) and accessible from my iMac and MacBook Pro. So syncing between those OS X apps works via that shared folder on the NAS, but there are the following drawbacks:
I need to (explicitly) mount the corresponding network share (well, I could automate this in the future with "automount" ;))
More severe: The "USB Sync Tool" then does not find the key chain (I believe it has also to do with the fact that the USB Sync tool expects the key file under ~/Library/Application Support/1Password (?), which is not the case for the "MAS edition") and syncing between OS X and iOS is currently not working for me (well, until the iOS version 4.3 supports Wi-Fi sync anyway).
So it works, but feels a bit clumsy (and what would happen if both applications would try to access the shared file at the same time?)
- For sync between iOS - OS X I used to use "USB Sync Tool"
After some forum research I found out that when I sync my desktop app key chain with the above mentioned folder ~/Library/Application Support/1Password then the "USB Sync Tool" is able to find the desktop key file and properly sync with my iPhone (iOS). However then the syncing between my iMac and MacBook Pro then does not work (without using a cloud service, which I don't want).
So currently I manually transfer the key chain from the NAS shared folder via iTunes onto iOS, off course loosing all changes I made on the iOS device (so currently I don't do any changes on iOS ;)).
- Hopefully that will work
Once Wi-Fi sync is enabled on iOS I assume I can then sync OS X <-> iOS via Wi-Fi and OS X <-> OS X via "Folder Sync" (located on the NAS). I'll see how that will work out, once Wi-Fi sync is available.
However my ultimate desire would be to sync all devices - OS X to OS X - with Wi-Fi sync! From what I read this is not currently targeted (when Wi-Fi sync is mentioned I always read "between OS X and iOS"), but Wi-Fi sync between desktop apps would be a huge win for me! I don't even care if I had to manually trigger the Wi-Fi sync (as will probably be the case with the OS X <-> iOS sync, right?).
Comments
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Until you mentioned this I never realised how much I wanted it. This would be a great deal better than using my iPhone as the go-between as I do now.
+1
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re USB sync tool see this topic. http://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/15965/status-of-the-usb-sync-tool#latest
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As to wifi sync between Macs, MikeT of AgileBits has said recently (on the beta forum):
Yes, it will be nice to be able to do this. It's something we want to try but not at the moment as we just want to focus on getting the core of Wi-Fi sync implemented between the Mac and iOS apps. After that, we'll see what we can go from there.
Stephen
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@thightower: Thanks for your reply. But as I mentioned I did use the USB Sync Tool already (see my initial post again ;)). The problem is that the USB Sync Tool expects the keychain file in a standard location such as ~/Library/Application Support/1password (IIRC), with the following issues:
- The USB Sync Tool does not work right away with the Mac App Store (MAS), as the MAS version of 1password stores its data in a "container" folder ("sandbox")
- You do get the USB Sync Tool to work with the 1password MAS version, if you setup a "Folder sync" and specify the folder to be the above metioned ~/Library/Application Support/1password
- However in order to sync my MacBook Pro and iMac - without any cloud service! - I needed to setup a different folder: a folder located on a network share (a Synology NAS shared folder, to be specific) - that breaks the USB Sync Tool workflow again.
- As you can read in your own linked thread the USB Sync Tool is not actively being developed anymore, as it is to be replaced by Wi-Fi sync ;)
As a matter of fact, since the iOS 1password app has now been updated the Wi-Fi sync indeed works between OS X and iOS and I do not need the USB Sync Tool anymore :) I have yet to verify whether all changes (on any device) get sync'ed properly, especially also along the "Folder sync" between the two Macs.
I can very well live with the "Folder sync" option for OS X: all it requires is that I explicitly mount the network share in order to sync my Macs (I hope the Folder sync does not break anything in case the folder is not mounted! In that case I would expect the "Folder sync" to not sync at all - and especially don't touch the local keychain! I have yet to verify that, too!).
But it would still be super cool to have "the same workflow" for all my devices: Wi-Fi sync. And according to @Stephen_C it is an option that AgileBits has apparently already thought of or which was otherwise already under discussion. So +1 for that feature from my side as well, now that Wi-Fi sync between OSX and iOS is in place :)
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May I chime in and add my vote for 1Password to develop/offer the capability to sync 1Password between two or more Macintosh computers w/o using Dropbox or iCloud. With all the news about NSA collection of data and the Arstechnica articles cited on the first post in this thread, I refuse to add any bank, credit card, or investment company information to 1Password so long as syncing has to be accomplished via Dropbox or iCloud.
Is there any simple workaround for the present? What if you did an Export All Items from the 1Password File menu on one Mac, placed that file on a USB drive, plugged it into a second Mac, then did an Import of the file from the USB drive?
Would you first have to somehow delete all the 1Password entries in the second Mac? I know this would be very clumsy but it is probably something you need do only once a week or month.
Thanks.
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I would like to add my +1 to this topic. I've got an iMac, a Macbook Air, and iPhone and an iPad. I'd love to sync 'em all using wifi rather than Dropbox.
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For the record: I mentioned that I currently sync my Macs via "Folder Sync", where the folder is located on a network share which is not automatically mounted upon login into OS X (since my Synology NAS is supposed to stay in "deep sleep" mode, unless I really require access to my photos etc.). So I thought I'd need to explicitly mount the corresponding share before starting 1password.
But to my very surprise this does not seem to be necessary! 1password must somehow not only store the path to the folder, but also the information that this is a network share (which btw is shared via AFP) - and automount it itself, if required. Nice!
Note that this is not standard functionality on OS X (unless the "automount" is configured accordingly). For instance neither Lightroom (some photo management software) nor iTunes automount the shares upon first access! So this is really something that 1password must be doing by itself. Unless I am overseeing something right now (but the share was definitively not mounted before launching 1password!).
Thanks, developers!
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Hi guys,
We do plan to expand and improve the Wi-Fi sync over time. The recent news of NSA and other cloud-related issues have made a lot of customers concerned, and thus, we do want to get it to the point that 1Password can truly be local with no cloud sync of any kind. It'd be awesome if we can expand it between Macs and Windows PCs as well. It's just that there's only 24 hours in a day and there's no human cloning technologies for our crack team of developers. :)
(Synology NAS)
Have you consider using their CloudStation app, maybe that could be used alongside 1Password's Folder Sync.
But to my very surprise this does not seem to be necessary! 1password must somehow not only store the path to the folder, but also the information that this is a network share (which btw is shared via AFP) - and automount it itself, if required. Nice!
That's not 1Password, that's likely OS X auto-mounting the drive (could be cached if you didn't kill the current OS X session) when it detects an app is trying to access the share. We don't have any code involving this.
What if you did an Export All Items from the 1Password File menu on one Mac, placed that file on a USB drive, plugged it into a second Mac, then did an Import of the file from the USB drive?
Don't export your file like that, that leaves the file unprotected as it is not encrypted. You don't want to risk losing that USB drive. Instead, you should use Folder Sync to your USB drive as it creates an encrypted file. You need to make sure 1Password is closed before you eject the drive. On the other Mac, you enable the Folder sync to this folder on USB drive with the data file.
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Synology CloudStation
Yes, I thought about this. However I deliberately activated as few as possible services of my NAS (especially no "server-like" services), in order to have my NAS fall asleep whenever possible ("deep sleep") - and in order to not complicate things too much ;)
But Folder Sync works okay for me so far.
automount
Yes, it seems that there must be some other (OS related) mechanism which seems to auto-mount the network share: yesterday the folder on my NAS was again automatically mounted when launching 1password on my iMac (at that time I am pretty sure the folder was not mounted, at least not in Finder - however other folders on the same NAS were already mounted, and they have the same credentials like my "sync" folder).
But when I then launched 1password on my MacBook Pro the "sync" folder was definitively not automatically mounted (on the same OS X 10.8.5).
Anyway, Mavericks now supports SMB2 better (and it is said to possibly completely replace AFP in the future) and there are "automounter" scripts for SMB shares available on the net, so I might go into this direction anyway (also for other applications such as iTunes and Lightroom etc.).
Still, glad to hear to Wi-Fi sync is in the (conceptional) work :) Thanks for the feedback!
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Hi @till213,
Yep, Mavericks also improved the SMB2 transfer speed over the Wi-Fi, which was confirmed by Ars today in this article.
Hopefully, Synology will improve the SMB2 protocol stack soon, I'm not having a lot of success there with SMB shares in Mavericks.
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Hi @MikeT,
okay, this is getting off-topic now ;) So, another Ars Technica reader and Synology user - Hi there! :)
I am running Mavericks on my (test) MacBook Pro. Haven't changed anything in my Synology setup, still AFP only - at least that one is running as before (including Time Machine backup - at least until now).
I did some quick research, and the SMB2 implementation on the Synology (DSM 4.3) is apparently not happy with some "network configuration parameters/protocol requests" sent by Mavericks: at least that's what I get from here (in german!):
www.synology-forum.de/showthread.html?46015-SMB2-und-OS-X-Mavericks
The Synology Samba log then apparently reads like:
smbd/negprot.c:714: [2013/10/23 13:29:08.029174, all 3, pid=891] reply_negprot
Selected protocol SMB 2.???
smbd/server_exit.c:181: [2013/10/23 13:29:08.030743, all 3, pid=891] exit_server_common
Server exit (NT_STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER)This seems to happen on the latest public DSM 4.3-3776 firmware (which I have as well).
Let's wait and see how Synology fixes that (the Samba implementation on DSM 4.3 seems to be quite "old" (about a year): 3.6.9 vs the current 4.1 (which might or might not work with the SMB2 requests sent by Mavericks - still not clear).
So, sorry for the off-topic noise, onwards with 1password and Wi-Fi sync ;)
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