Multiple Copies of 1Password
I have 2 External Drives that i have created as CLONES on my main Mac Hard Drive. I want these clones to contain everything that is on my Hard Drive so that if my Hard drive fails, I can still boot from one of the clones and continue to use my computer until I have time to correct the problem. This means that I want to keep both the 1Password data and the 1Password App on ALL 3 machines. Is there anyway I can do so without getting the Duplicate Copy Warning, every time I get an update? Even if I keep getting the warning, it appears that the update occurs without any problem - is that correct?
1Password Version: 6.5 Beta 16
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OSX 10.11.6
Sync Type: Dropbox
Comments
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I have 2 External Drives that i have created as CLONES on my main Mac Hard Drive. I want these clones to contain everything that is on my Hard Drive so that if my Hard drive fails, I can still boot from one of the clones and continue to use my computer until I have time to correct the problem. This means that I want to keep both the 1Password data and the 1Password App on ALL 3 machines. Is there anyway I can do so without getting the Duplicate Copy Warning, every time I get an update? Even if I keep getting the warning, it appears that the update occurs without any problem - is that correct?
1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided0 -
Hi @BarryW,
Thanks for writing in with your question.
We wish there was a better solution than presenting this dialog, but unfortunately we're at the mercy of the OS in this particular case.
The way that the OS launches the 1Password mini application is the point of contention here, unfortunately the process responsible for that can get extremely confused about which copy of 1Password mini it should launch in these cases. Even though you would expect it to launch the one from the primary drive, it has a mind of it own and does arbitrarily decide which one to launch. This can work out ok if all the copies of 1Password are the same version, but we do regularly update mini in ways that cause it to not be compatible with the 1Password.app (adding features, fixing bugs, etc). The side effect of those changes in the absence of that dialog is that very strange things can happen to users such as yourself. Depending on what features were added or bugs fixed, awful scenarios like mini crashes and relaunches and crashes again indefinitely could occur.
The two workarounds i've seen mentioned by others are:
- unmount the clone drives when updating/launching 1Password to ensure that the correct version is always launched
- zip the 1Password.app on the clone drive and delete the app so that the app is still there but in zipped form
So, the update is able to succeed, the issue isn't with replacing the files on your drive but rather what happens when attempting to potentially re-launch the application after the update has been applied.
Let us know if you have any additional questions and we'll do our best to answer them!
Rudy
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I too find this to be incredibly annoying. Can you please elaborate on what the "way that the OS launches the 1Password mini application" really means? Isn't "mini" specified by a path? Why does this issue not affect any other applications?
Best,
Leif0 -
Hi @Leif,
Isn't "mini" specified by a path?
If it was, this probably wouldn't be a problem. However, due to Apple sandboxing restrictions, the main 1Password app is only allowed to tell macOS to "launch 1Password mini" and not "launch 1Password mini from this location". macOS decides which one to launch.
To elaborate on that: In order for 1Password to start 1Password mini, it tells launchd (or more specifically Launch Services) to launch it. Launch Services decides what to launch based on an app id, and does not accept a specific path. When Launch Services finds multiple copies of 1Password mini, it usually launches the correct one, but sometimes it doesn't. It's a bit random, and unfortunately there's really nothing we can do to convince Launch Services to launch the correct copy of mini, as that's not up to the 1Password app. If it was, we would have solved this a long time ago - but this is something that must be addressed by Apple on the OS level.
Why does this issue not affect any other applications?
The reason you haven't noticed similar problems with other apps is because not many apps are running two separate components at the same time.
I hope this helps to explain a bit more about the problem, but don't hesitate to let us know if you have more questions. Cheers! :)
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