sync disaster — help please

williamporter

I've been using 1Password on 4 machines: two Macs (iMac and Macbook Air) and 2 iOS devices (iPhone and iPad). Everything's running latest version of the appropriate operating system. My copies of 1Password were up to date; plus, I was participating in the beta program on at least one of the Macs and on the iOS devices. I'm posting here because I don't want help with the beta. I am just hoping to get some guidance on how to get the official version working.

Until a couple of weeks ago I'd been using Dropbox sync. Everything was working great. Then I switched to iCloud sync. I got the two Macs syncing okay, but the iOS devices never recovered. I changed some key passwords on the Macs in the aftermath of Heartbleed, and these new passwords still haven't shown up in 1Password on the iOS devices.

Today, I tried to repair the situation, and I seem only to have made things worse. I tried to go back to Dropbox syncing and that didn't work, so then I returned to iCloud syncing. And now one of the Macs is displaying an out-of-date set of passwords as well. At the moment, I have the latest copy of the passwords available only on 1 of the four machines: the iMac. Fearing I could lose even that, I exported all my passwords and have saved them outside 1Password in an encrypted file on my computer.

At the moment, I'd be happy to get the 2 Macs syncing again.

I do have more than one Apple account, but as far as I can tell I'm signed into the same iCloud account on both machines. (I see the same email in the iCloud control panel in System Prefs on both machines. My bookmarks are syncing in Safari, and my documents in Pages and Numbers sync okay, too.

On both machines, in 1Password, I've selected iCloud sync, and when setting that up, I selected the 'iCloud / iOS beta' option.

I'm using 1Password 4.3 (430017) on the Macbook Air and 1Password 4.3.1 beta 5 (431005) on the iMac.

I've rebooted all of the machines several times.

Help! I'm just about ready to delete it all and start from scratch but hoping I don't have to do that.

Will

williamporter

By the way, when I look in the Sync setup dialog for 1Password prefs on both machines, I see the same thing for the path:

iCloud > onepassword_data

Will

williamporter

One last note: I seem now to have completely lost access to my current password set. Earlier, when I posted the first message, the iMac had the right passwords and the Macbook Air had the old ones. Now they both have the old passwords. I'm glad I exported everything from 1Password on the iMac when I had the choice.

mikebore

I have been there, got the tee shirt! My advice which may not be what Agile would say and may be overkill, is to completely uninstall 1P from the iOS devices and remove all data from the MacBook Air. Just work on the iMac for now.

On the iOS devices completely uninstalling ensures there can be no old data which can be merged back with the good. (the "delete data" option is an alternative).

On the Macbook Air you also need to get rid of the old data. The official way is "stop syncing" from the preferences, and chose remove data. Alternatively, since it looks like you are using the Agile Store version, the old data is in the Application support folder. Delete the 1Password folder from here (you could just move it somewhere else for now as it does contain old backups).

The iMac should have made a backup in the period after you made the changes before it merged with the old data, so you should be able to restore that from within the app, without using your export. I haven't done an import from a previous export but it ought to work if you haven't got a backup at the right point.

When the iMac is as you want it, you can reinstall on the other devices in turn, and they should pick up the new data without merging with the old which is the big danger.

williamporter

I seem to have things (almost) back to normal. Thought I'd post a quick follow-up.

First, thanks to user mikebore. I'd just about decided to do exactly as you suggested but found your detailed instructions helpful and reassuring. Since I work more on the Macbook Air than the iMac, I decided to make the MBA my master or primary machine for this restoration process, but otherwise, I did things more or less as you suggested.

Here's a summary.

1. The very first thing I did (as soon I noticed that I had a sync problem) was export 1Password data from the machine with the good copy. I exported to .csv and the imported into a FileMaker Pro 13 database, but importing into Numbers or Excel would have worked, too. To be honest, I wasn't aware at that time that 1Password was making regular backups, but even if I had been, I wouldn't have trusted them. So this seemed like a good idea.
2. I deleted 1Password and 1Password beta from the iPad and iPhone.
3. I disabled sync on on both of the computers.
4. I deleted the 1Password app from the iMac (which as I said, is my secondary computer). I also dug through the folders in user/Library/Application Support. Pulled out a couple folders that looked potentially important and held on to them on the iMac desktop. Dragged everything else to Trash.

So now I had 1Password working on the Macbook Air and nowhere else. The problem was, the data on the Macbook Air was bad: older passwords had replaced newer ones.

1. I knew the exact date when I discovered the sync problem: It was the day I posted my original message in this thread. So I got into 1Password > Preferences > Backup, and restored the most recent backup prior to that date. Tested that by checking half a dozen logins I knew had been changed recently, and saw that the new passwords were in fact restored. I now seemed to be in good shape on the Macbook Air.
2. Back in 1Password > Preferences, I went to Sync and turned on Dropbox syncing. I chose Dropbox syncing because, frankly, I don't understand iCloud and don't trust it very much. And because 1Password had worked great for me for a long time with Dropbox syncing but fell apart when I switched from Dropbox to iCloud. I'm sticking with Dropbox for now. YMMV.
3. I left 1Password alone for over an hour to sync with Dropbox, came back and checked my half dozen key passwords and confirmed everything was still working all right. It was.
4. Went to System Preferences > iCloud > Documents & Data, and UN-checked (disabled) iCloud storage for 1Password mini. Did this both on iMac and Macbook Air. (I think this may be the source of some of my problems.)
5. A day after getting the first computer working, I reinstalled 1Password on the other computer and enabled Dropbox sync.
6. I have now reinstalled 1Password from the iOS App Store on my iPad (not yet on my iPhone). During reinstallation I indicated I had used 1Password before, and pointed to the vault on Dropbox. Seems to be working on the iPad now, too.

So I'm good again, as far as I can tell.

The automatic 1Password backups, in the end, saved the day. I would suggest to anybody else having a problem that you (a) make a careful note of the DATE the problem begins, so if you restore from a backup, you know how far back to go; and (b) if you delete 1Password in order to deal with a problem, be careful to hang on to those backups until you know things are resolved.

Still, the whole thing was a bit scary. For a short time there I was afraid that I might not be able to get into my bank, or Google (where all my business as well as personal email is), credit cards, etc.

Will

mikebore

Glad it worked out and to have been a help.

I have also switched recently from iCloud to Dropbox, having gained the feeling after several months, that at least some of the (now too frequent) problems I was experiencing were associated with iCloud.

I still use iCloud for some Pages and Numbers docs and have noticed that iCloud is not comfortable with second bootable partitions on the same computer. Simply booting from the second partition, and then back to the main partition causes Pages to report that two versions of the document now exist, one of which was been modified on the second partition, even though that partition doesn't even have Pages installed. If something similar is happening to the 1Password iCloud data it might explain things a bit.

I have also had the info in the notes sections of banks and credit cards becoming duplicated, triplicated and more.

It is early days yet, but so far I have more confidence in Dropbox syncing, though I had to re-set up the sync on my iPhone yesterday. I think this is one of the recognised bugs which have become common with 1Password since version 4 landed. Fantastic program when it is working, but currently "high maintenance".

williamporter

@mikebore: Like you, I continue to use iCloud for Pages and Numbers and to sync Safari bookmarks and Calendar info. But I simply don't understand what's happening with iCloud. Where is my data? I find the Dropbox concept very easy to understand. The iCloud concept, not so much. Perhaps that's because Apple is trying too hard to prevent me from understanding or even asking about it. They seem to want it to appear to be magic.

Back to 1Password: I had been going along fine with Dropbox sync, and then, oh, about a month ago, I tried switching to iCloud sync. The switch seemed really easy and at first things seemed to work okay, but then I encountered problems. I was also using the beta versions of 1Password on a couple of my machines; maybe that made a difference. Anyway, I switched back to Dropbox — and that's when things fell apart on me. I don't know but I suspect that, when I switched to iCloud, 1Password enabled use of 1Password mini; but when I switched back to Dropbox sync, 1Password did not DISABLE that. At least, in in the last 24 hours since getting things up and running again, when I looked at the iCloud panel in System Prefs, 1Password mini was enabled still. Maybe this is a bug in 1Password. Seems to me iCloud sync ought to be all or nothing.

I still have no idea whether there are copies of my vault sitting on some Apple iCloud server or not.

Meek

Hi @williamporter‌,

Wow, it sounds like you have been through quite the ordeal - I am so sorry to hear about all the trouble. That said, I am so happy to hear that you were able to get everything back up and running through Dropbox sync with @mikebore's help!

Regarding the iCloud vs Dropbox question, I understand your apprehension with choosing a syncing method that is harder to understand what is going on in the background. Indeed, iCloud reveals very little about what is happening behind the scenes. While this does make for a clean, simple solution when it works, if things go wrong it can be a lot harder to diagnose what is going on.

iCloud stores your 1Password data in the following folder:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/2BUA8C4S2C~com~agilebits~onepassword

If you want to be sure that there is no leftover data in iCloud, then you can simply remove the above folder, if it exists. Be sure to make regular backups though, just in case :)

williamporter

Meek: Thanks for the tip about the location of the iCloud data. There was a folder there and one for 1Password beta, too, so I removed them both. (I'm taking a vacay from the beta program while I get my 1Password feet back on the ground.)

Meek

Hi @williamporter‌,

You are most welcome! If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know.