Dropbox sync not working on the Mac
I just had to sync my iOS devices over WiFi to bring them in sync with my Mac, since items I had added on the Mac side (10.10.3) were not showing up on the iOS side. I just created a test item on my iPhone, synced with Dropbox and it showed up on my iPad, so Dropbox is fine on iOS, but it has yet to show up on the Mac. I've disabled and reenabled Dropbox syncing on the Mac and still no luck. Suggestions? Thanks.
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Hi @dtoub,
The first possibility I would consider is if they're all pointing to the same 1Password.agilekeychain or not. 1Password for Mac will default to creating a .agilekeychain in
~/Dropbox/1Password/if it doesn't find an existing one but 1Password for iOS will use~/Dropbox/apps/1Password/as that's where iOS apps are meant to store their files in Dropbox. So it is possible your Mac could be syncing to a different .agilekeychain and that could explain your difficulties.How to check.
- On your Mac open 1Password's preferences and switch to the sync tab. It will show you the path 1Password is syncing to in Dropbox.
- On one of your iOS devices open 1Password for iOS and then go to Settings > Sync > Sync Service. Just under the line stating the current sync method is Dropbox it should show you the path. On an iOS device it will ignore the
~/Dropboxand just show you the rest of the path, so something like/1Password/1Password.agilekeychainor/apps/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain
Do the two match?
If they do we'll want to consider the possibility that for some reason Dropbox may not be syncing on your Mac at the moment, you can check the status of Dropbox using this KB article of theirs, How do I know when Dropbox is syncing?
Please do let us know how you get along and if we've identified the cause or not. If we haven't we'll continue with the troubleshooting.
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Thanks. The Mac is indeed syncing to ~/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain. On iOS, it syncs to Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain (so I assume these are the same). Dropbox is syncing on my Mac. I'm stumped.
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One question I do have, since Dropbox is currently syncing a lot of stuff: when 1PW syncs on the Mac side, does it sync to dropbox at that time (which is my assumption), or does 1PW merely enter into Dropbox's queue, in which case there could be a very significant delay? I say that because until a few days ago, as best I can tell everything was in sync with my iOS devices and 1PW on my Mac, but I had a situation two days ago in which Dropbox seemed to get stuck in the process and I ended up unlinking and relinking my computer to Dropbox and also deleting and rebuilding the cache folder. However, that process ended this morning, with Dropbox reporting that everything was in sync, so I'm not sure what's going on .
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Actually, scratch that. I went into the Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain folder on Dropbox on the Web, and in the Data subfolder, it looks like a lot of .1password files with long names were updated 40 minutes ago or later. But here's what's interesting: I just opened 1PW on my Mac and it says it just synced in Settings:Sync, but refreshing that same Dropbox page did not show any new activity. I suspect my Mac is going to the wrong place, but that isn't what the app is reporting...
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I also should mention that I'm running the latest beta of 1PW
1Password 5
Version 5.4.BETA-4 (540004)
Agile Beta0 -
Ok, I just tried reverting to the official App Store version of 1PW 5. No change. So I changed to iCloud sync (since I'm now not running the beta) and that worked flawlessly. So the problem isn't likely with 1PW but with something on the Dropbox end. Again, if one syncs 1PW with Dropbox on the Mac side, does that sync definitely happen immediately or is it placed in the Dropbox queue? If the latter, then I might be done once Dropbox has completed rebuilding its cache. Thoughts? Thanks.
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Hi @dtoub,
If on your iOS device, on the Sync page it said
/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychainand not just/1Password.agilekeychainmy first thought would be you also have aDropboxfolder inside Dropbox with a .agilekeychain in there. If I use Mac paths it will be easier to show what I mean~/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain(Mac) ==/1Password.agilekeychain(iOS)~/Dropbox/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain(Mac) ==/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain(iOS)
However, if you have had syncing issues with Dropbox recently on your Mac I think we've found a far more likely culprit. On iOS we use a Dropbox API to communicate with Dropbox but on your Mac we pass all responsibility to the Dropbox service that is running. What we do is we write to your Dropbox folder, treating it simply as a locally writeable location and then the rest of the responsibility of syncing and checking for conflicts etc. is handled by Dropbox. We work with Dropbox's conflict approach as ultimately the files are encrypted and only we can look inside but syncing uses whatever queueing system their Dropbox service uses.
The gist is though, if you've been fighting with Dropbox on your Mac it could very well affect your 1Password syncing.
Now there are a couple of lovely little glitches which aren't Dropbox's fault (or ours). I have witnessed instances of where Dropbox updates its Dropbox folder but the changes are not visible in a Finder window straight away. Instead I could only tell they happened as I was also working in a Terminal window. We do rely on the same backend services that Finder relies on so we have seen issues of 1Password not being aware files have been updated in a timely fashion but we should be talking about minutes at most.
If Dropbox is saying everything is properly synced I would recommend closing 1Password using the keyboard shortcut
⌃⌘Qto fully quit both 1Password and 1Password mini. Hopefully when you launch it again it will force 1Password to do a full check of the sync data. If that doesn't work I would try a reboot of your Mac and then compare the contents of yourDatasubfolder like you did before. If Dropbox is saying it's synced but Finder still isn't showing the right number of files we do have a Dropbox problem to resolve so you can get sync running again.Let us know how you get along with that and we can try and think of some other approaches if need be.
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Thanks. That actually makes me feel better as it suggests the problem is with Dropbox, which is indeed where I have been having issues.
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@dtoub, I'm glad the information from @littlebobbytables was helpful for you! I agree that it sounds like the issue seems to be with Dropbox on your Mac. Has Dropbox completed rebuilding its cache? And if so, have you tried switching back to Dropbox sync to see if it works correctly now? If you decide to stick with iCloud sync (since that seems to be working well for you), you should be all set. But if you switch back to Dropbox sync and still have some trouble with that, please let us know. Thanks!
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Thanks. DB is still downloading the file list (over a day now...sheesh) and the # of uploaded files is increasing and now over 10k, while it's indexing nearly 900k files. I assume that's all because I unlinked and then relinked my computer and also trashed the Dropbox cache. But it's really taking forever. Almost as bad as when I uploaded my files the first time; I have 700 GB on Dropbox, but nothing has synced lately of course because it's been indexing. If it finally ends, and hopefully it will, I do plan to retest Dropbox sync. Thanks.
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700GB on Dropbox! "Holy Heart Failure Batman!" as TV Robin once said (at least according to Wikipedia). That's a lot of syncing @dtoub!
Unfortunately yeah, I can imagine Dropbox sync with 1Password will be pretty much an exercise in futility until it has settled down but with a little luck once it has normality should return. If you're still having troubles though do get in touch.
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Well I have a 1 TB account with them so why shouldn't one be able to use much of it?
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You're completely right, there's no point having 1TB of space if you're not going to use it. It doesn't mean I wouldn't dread any situation where I then need to re-sync everything though. Even on a nice fast connection that will take time.
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It should just have to reindex, rather than reupload, so that's not as bad, although it still is a bandwidth and time suck. Thanks.
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Hopefully that all works out for you once Dropbox is finished reindexing. Let us know how it goes!
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