Folder backup on Google Drive constantly changing

mstone
mstone
Community Member

We are using a shared Google Drive account to share a backed up keychain with multiple people for the desktop client. As discussed in other threads, we use the "Folder" sync option, and save our 1Pass keychain to our Drive. We noticed today that the keychain is being nearly constantly updated, which causes the Drive to remain in a persistent "sync" state and is eating up bandwidth.

The keychain is a .agilekeychain, and the individual files that are being synced look like GUID filenames with a .1password extension. I am on Mac version 5.3.2, but I can't confirm the exact version of everyone on the team.


1Password Version: 5.3.2
Extension Version: 4.4.2.90
OS Version: 10.10.4
Sync Type: Google Drive (local folder)
Referrer: kb:sync-options, kb-search:constant sync

Comments

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @mstone,

    If you were to look inside the Agile Keychain (it's a bundle, a specially treated folder) you would first find a data folder and inside there a default folder. Do any of the files in there have the work conflict in the filename? I don't use Google Drive but hopefully they do something similar to Dropbox in this regard.

    I would suspect they do and I suspect that 1Password has entered a bit of a vicious cycle where the conflicts aren't being handled properly. Now in a number of cases the easiest solution is to delete this Agile Keychain and have 1Password create a new one. What makes it not ideal is you then have to have each copy of 1Password reconnect to the new Agile Keychain that you create. It does mean a bit of work but that should resolve the issue unless the vault on one copy of 1Password is damaged somehow and it will start creating conflict files again. If the issue reoccurs what we'd need to try and do is identify the machine have problems and start over on that machine. We would use the new Agile Keychain to populate the newly fresh copy of 1Password and that would then hopefully take care of that.

    Now that's the overview. It might be you need it step by step which is perfectly fine, just say you would like detailed steps and we'll get right on that :smile:

  • schmunk
    schmunk
    Community Member
    edited August 2015

    We have similar problems with GoogleDrive. We're using the synced folder with several team members (all OS X) and GoogleDrive syncing entered a weird state of file conflicts for every(!) shared file. See the attached screenshot for an example.

    We found this problem only recently and have to go through file-mtime reviews to find a way how to manually fix/rebuild the password database.

    This makes GoogleDrive completely unusable for syncing, since the client-app does not inform you about the conflict and there's no setting either to solve a conflict manually or at least stop on conflicts at all.
    Same, although files are marked as conflicted in a different way, applies also for OwnCloud - one team member has set this option for another vault. And for several other cloud-sync solutions, such as DiskStation from Synology.

    I know that you don't provide support for these 3rd-party solutions and I think that this is a reason why DropBox is the only officially supported solution, since it looks like DropBox is at least not creating conflicts, but rather the last one who saves a password wins - at least in our tests.

    1password should be aware of .1password files which are synced to it's folder, which do not match a certain naming convention.

    Related: https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/46206/having-trouble-onboarding-a-coworker-to-a-vault-shared-on-google-drive

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @schmunk ,

    I'm sorry to hear that you've been having difficulty with Google Drive! You're right, each sync solution handles conflicts differently, and 1Password just isn't familiar with each of those methods.

    Have you tried resetting sync as Little Bobby suggested in the earlier thread? If you disable sync on all devices, remove the .agilekeychain from Google Drive, and then enable sync on a trusted computer (that has a complete and up-to-date copy of the database) you will get a fresh new keychain that should be free of those conflicts. You can then sync all other computers to that new keychain.

  • schmunk
    schmunk
    Community Member

    remove the .agilekeychain from Google Drive, and then enable sync on a trusted computer (that has a complete and up-to-date copy of the database) you will get a fresh new keychain that should be free of those conflicts. You can then sync all other computers to that new keychain.

    We went through this process before, at least 3 times in a period over around 10 months.
    We had our vaults versioned - that's why I know it, like vault-1.0, -1.1, -1.2, because we had similar problems before - just today we realized the reason for our problems.

    It is not very obvious that something and what exactly goes wrong, that's why we can not determine which computer has a complete keychain - I suspect none has. We found some passwords on 3 of 5 computers and 2 of 5 and 1 of 5 - despite the sync-client showing the sync completed "successfully".

    The easiest way for us is to sort by last change and pick the recent ones from each client and copy them to the new vault on DropBox.

  • schmunk
    schmunk
    Community Member

    See also this open issue "SINCE 2012" on GoogleDrive: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/Yjmkd4nbhw4/fnbgPcZTXUkJ

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @schmunk,

    I don't use Google Drive myself so I wasn't aware of that issue. Unfortunately if that is the case I can sadly see how it would cause utter chaos, especially if this is separate from any form of conflict resolution they may have :(

    Assuming you're running 1Password 4 or 5 everywhere and you're considering Dropbox as it sounds you are then it should be possible to have all of the copies merge. I believe the following would be your best option.

    1. On the very first Mac you want to enter 1Password's preferences and switch to the Backup tab. Click the Backup Now button to create a safety net.
    2. Have this Mac create the new Agile Keychains in Dropbox by setting up syncing. Let Dropbox synchronise all the changes.
    3. Move to the next Mac in line and ensure Dropbox has finished synchronising all the changes to this Mac.
    4. Enter 1Password's preferences, switch to the Backup tab and click the Backup Now button to create a safety net for this vault.
    5. Connect to the existing Agile Keychain, 1Password will probably offer up a warning about merging but that's what you want to happen. This will create a number of changes and possible additions depending on how diverged the vaults have become. Let Dropbox settle.
    6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each other machine. Each will add anything missing from in the sync container that is present in this local copy of the vault.
    7. Return to the first Mac and have it update from all the changes performed by the other Macs.
    8. Repeat step 7 for the other Macs.

    At this point everything should have settle down and you will now have the manual process of checking for conflicts and just general sanity checking. If there is any doubt over which copy is correct and which isn't 1Password won't take the chance, it will keep all the data until somebody cleans the item up. If you create a Smart Folder for if Conflict fields are present this will help identify the items you will want to start with. The way it works for that first synchronisation is if there is an item in the sync container and an item in the local vault with the same Universally Unique ID (UUID) we merge and anything that doesn't match will get thrown into a new section titled Conflicts. If two items look similar but don't have the same UUID then they're treated as distinct items so it could appear as if an item has duplicates. After the manual corrections though hopefully you don't have to go through this again.

    I am sorry for all the fighting you seem to have had between Google Drive and 1Password and if you have any questions about anything I've said above please do post back here.

This discussion has been closed.