Transitioning to Mojave using two partitions
As a separate user account, Mojave is on a separate partition that I shall transition to eventually once all operates normally; hence 'currently' one partition has High Sierra and the other Mojave each having the same copy of 1P7 installed on both. My 1P7 is a standalone version. All fine until today whilst within the Mojave partition, it seems 1P7 attempted an update and warned 'Extra copies of 1Password found' suggesting I delete 1P7 from the High Sierra partition.
This is clearly inconvenient as I need 1P7 for 'normal' working within High Sierra until the eventual move to Mojave but I need 1P7 in Mojave too as both are 'working' environments for me during this transition. I wasn't sure how to proceed with the recommendation, whether to delete or update, so selected 'cancel' pending your guidance. Could you please provide guidance on how best to manage this?
1Password Version: 7.2.1
Extension Version: 7.2.1
OS Version: 10.14.1
Sync Type: DropBox
Comments
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Welcome to the forum, @Heter0dyne! I'm sorry for the trouble. Unfortunately, it's not something I'm going to be able to give you a neat solution for. When launching or updating 1Password for Mac, if multiple copies of the app are present, sometimes launchd (the process responsible) will launch the first one it comes across, meaning it can sometimes choose the wrong one. In cases where the "extra copies" are backups made by SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner or similar backup utilities, often this can be worked around by simply unmounting the external drive on which these backups reside. But if you've got a dual-boot setup, launchd will see both partitions and this problem may occur.
You can potentially get around this by turning off automatic update checks and remembering to check manually. Then, when a new version is found, instead of using the built-in updater, you can visit our downloads page and manually download the new version, quit out of the existing one on your Mac and run the full installer. I know that's inconvenient, but it's the only way to both keep things up to date and avoid the issues with multiple copies on your hard drive. Another option would be to not update 1Password until such time as you're ready to make the switch fully -- I assume that won't be too long a time. Ordinarily, I'd recommend users update as soon as we release new versions, but assuming you don't plan an extended "in-between" period, it would probably be OK for you to wait. And of course, your third option would be to either simply move to Mojave now, or to remove 1Password from one or the other of your partitions. Hope that helps! :)
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Thank you so much Lars for your time and support. I found your reply to be immensely informative and helpful and, yes, I fully understood the full extent of your explanation around the difficulties, particularly around 'launchd'!
Given the options and to manage for the time being, I have decided to follow your initial suggestion to maintain 1Password in both partitions and update only through downloads. I hope to have full functionality in Mojave soon e.g. scanner etc., for all my software and thus be able to use Mojave long term.
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@Heter0dyne - you're quite welcome, glad the explanation helped. Let us know if you have any further questions or troubles.
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@Nekoninda - I can try to give some additional insight/alternate strategies, but please remember that yours is a significant edge case. I wish it were not the case that launchd was as fickle as it apparently is, but because that's the case, that's why we've gone even further than simply not recommending users attempt this but actually putting checks for additional copies of 1Password for Mac in the update process itself -- because of all the problems it generated. It's not as simple as just running the installer twice if it happens to update the "other" copy. Two copies of 7.2 or newer won't ever be playing nice with Safari, for one thing. Or things could work fine for a while, and then just go south without warning, and unpredictably.
- You could use a VM to isolate either Mojave or whatever pre-Mojave version of macOS you're using. This will be the best way to run both at the same time, though of course there would be drawbacks to things like video conferencing, or other audio/video software in a VM context (unless you have an absolute TON of RAM, and potentially even then, depending on your hard drive setup).
- You could also not mount (or dismount) the other partition when you're working with one of them -- and definitely when you're updating 1Password for Mac)...though I'm not sure you could prevent volumes from being mounted during the boot process unless they're on disks that can be physically powered down/disconnected from your Mac. There are instructions on various websites for how to use
/etc/fstabto do that, but that's not something we're going to advocate or give instructions for how to do here. You could probably automate this process with a login script, if you were so inclined. Though if you need shared data between the two partitions, you'd have to create a third one for common data. - You could fully quit and then zip up 1Password for Mac on each partition, every time you exit it. (Another possibility here would be deleting 1Password for Mac each time you finish using a partition, keeping a download link handy (or the package installer in your Downloads folder) and re-installing each time you need to use it.
There may be other, even more esoteric solutions, but the bottom line here is that no matter what you choose, running two partitions for two different sets of data/applications/uses is going to be...clunky, and come with multiple drawbacks. This is one of them. One of the calculations I'd be making is whether all of the inconvenience I'm considering putting myself (and anyone else who has to use this setup) through is worth whatever advantages I'm getting (or disadvantages I'm avoiding) by being setting up this dual-boot system that allows me to run this important software. Just food for thought. Hope some of the above helps.
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Hello @Nekoninda,
I'll do my best to answer your questions.
Safari. Starting with 1Password 7.2 for Mac (available for macOS 10.12 and newer) we've moved to Safari App Extension approach for the 1Password extension. The extension is bundled inside the app and relies on the same index as used by Spotlight and launchdb. My experience is if Safari finds more than one copy of the 1Password application bundle it simply doesn't list the 1Password extension as present. It's all automated and so there is no way to manually install it.
For other browsers the issue is part of one copy already running and part of another being launched. The issue isn't one of data integrity but the various security checks that 1Password performs on its own processes as well as the browser. These will fail when multiple copies are running and 1Password will refuse to connect to that process. Basically all sorts of squirrelly behaviour like a completely unresponsive extension, 1Password briefly coming to the foreground and disappearing and a whole host of other weird behaviour. I doubt we've catalogued all the ways things can misbehave in this scenario. Most are related to the extension and filling and none involve actual risk to your data.
Putting Safari to one side, where I would expect things to break 100% of the time for copies of 7.2 and newer, for other browsers things could work for ages and then start playing up because suddenly macOS has decided the copy off in another volume is a better option than the one sitting in this partition's
/Applications/folder.I don't anticipate any issues during an upgrade but I could easily be wrong given all the factors involved. Even then I wouldn't expect there to be any risk to your data which is of course is always the primary concern.
Does that help at all?
Personally I recommend using a VM. It allows you to have a completely isolated copy of macOS, you can launch it as needed and it doesn't require you shutting the Mac down to boot into another copy of macOS. For work I've got VMs for High Sierra all the way through to Mavericks and Windows and I wouldn't want to be without it. It just makes a whole bunch of things easier. You can share folders and run 1Password in the VM or copy and paste from the main copy, whatever works for you. I say that as somebody who thought the ability to easily boot another partition was amazing, especially compared to Windows but there are too many things that mean it can be a pain if both volumes are always available to both copies these days.
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