Deleted Folders Reappear


Brilliantsam

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Hi,

 

We're seeing an issue where deleted folders sometimes reappear.

 

An employee was tidying up files and deleting some redundant folders inside a top level folder. He noticed that a folder he deleted then reappeared again.

 

Could this be happening if there was someone with access to the top level folder who was offline while the deletion took place then came online and re-synced the deleted folder?

 

If not then any ideas what could be causing this?

 

Thank you,

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  • 3 weeks later...

@all,

We've managed to reproduce similar issue with only one Android device (which looks to be specific for only this particular device). Could you please describe the environment when deleted folders return: how much peers are involved? are they desktop / mobiles? If someone has a stable repro - please collect debugs for me as I need it to see the traces of issue in debug logs.

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@RomanZ - this JUST happened to me.  I deleted a folder from 'master' when peer was turned off.  Turning on peer and the folder reappeared on the master - BUT not the full folder (which was a 6Gb mistakenly copied folder) but only one sub folder and a couple of files.  On deleting AGAIN from the master it has now stopped coming back.  This is a simple sync setup with only two computers running 1.4.93 win7 64 bit on the 'master' win8.1 on the Peer.  very strange and also very random.

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Sorry for my late response RomanZ have not been monitoring this thread - let me come back to you as I am not sure what your diagram means on first glance! Is this two scenarios in tandem, or does it flow from left side top to bottom then across to the right side and top to bottom. In fact what happened is pretty simple, so I will come back very soon!

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No RomanZ your understanding is not correct. In fact the sub folder B deletion was done with BTSync turned ON. Please see attached doc which attempts to explain in more detail, but really it is simple. I deleted a folder within a synced folder with sync ON on one PC, but with the other PC turned off. When the second PC came on it automatically started syncing the sub folder B BACK to the folder A on PC #1 With BOTH machines turned on and BTSYNC running the second attempt at deletion worked and propagated itself across to the peer properly.Presentation1.pdf

What I also find disturbing is that the addition OR deletion of folders does not appear to be recorded in the history - it only appears to record the addition and deletion of files.

@colinabroad

It's time diagram. Left and right are flow for 2 your computers. Rectangles are states while arrows are your actions.

OK got it - so your first understanding is wrong - top left Master peer is ON at this point and remains ON all the time. Peer is OFF at this point. Check the pdf and you should get it I hope!

I would have sent another file with the timeline corrected, but the forum won't let me post more than 500mb total - daft!

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Hi again RomanZ - no, absolutely nothing special, just full of files. No apps/programs were running when I did the initial delete or the second one. The ONLY thing for me to note was that the PC #2 was off when the delete happened the first time. Perhaps (and ONLY perhaps) the sync app had not completed logging the entire set of files when I turned on the second PC ? maybe it got confused ? I guess I could try repeating the process by copying the same folder set (or a completely different random set) with both machines on, then turn off PC#2 and delete from PC #1 and turn on PC#2 again - but then YOU can do this in your lab can't you?

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@colinabroad

The first thing I did when understand your scenario - tried to repro it in my Lab several times, no success. For the PC #2 - I ask if there are some apps added to autorun that might read/write data to the folder that was deleted on PC#1 BEFORE PC#2 fully booted up and Sync started.

I.e. there is small period of time, when PC#2 is already working and system loads all autorun apps and Sync is not loaded yet. Are you aware of any app that might write data to your folder at this moment?

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@RomanZ - again, sorry, no autorun apps that would be writing data - I only have Avast, bittorrent sync, teamviewer and a samsung services app running on autostart, so nothing at all even looking at this folder set (which is my repository for data only) when starting up the computer.  I will have a go at repeating the scenario, but it will have to be in a couple of days time.  Brilliantsam seems to have suffered from exactly the same issue - perhaps she/he could add something to this ??  I only added my bit as I saw someone else had this trouble!

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@colinabroad

I'll try Avast as well in my Lab as well (although anti-malware solutions rarely open files for writing, they may significantly delay file open which might reveal some new issue).

Leave your logs on if possible - and capture them immediately if issue pops up again. 

 

Thanks for your help!

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@colinabroad we've been having the same issue at you albeit entirely on MacBooks and a MacMini.

 

Say we have an online peer and an offline peer with the same folder and subfolder share. The online peer deletes the subfolder. The offline peer then comes online and because they still had the subfolder when the online deletion happened it isn't recognised as a deletion for them. It's recognised as a new folder for the original online peer. Sorry if that's confusing.

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not confusing at all Sam.  what is confusing is why.  Is your problem repeatable?  I have only had this happen to me once, and it was spooky that it happened whilst I was reading the thread - hence my initial reply.  I am going to try to repeat this at the weekend when I have a little more time to play.  If you are able to repeat the issue then do please send in your logs for the guys to look at - I wil do the same over the weekend sometime.

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  • 2 months later...

No progress on this matter? I too have this problem, and it's really annoying.

I add files on one client, and on the other I remove them, and sometimes the file keeps getting readded and redownloaded. Files are big, like 5 GB or more, so it's a lot of wasted bandwidth.

 

Would appreciate some feedback on this.

 

Thank.s

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@uffowich

We've located one of such issues with certain model of Android devices involved and working to fix it. Though, it looks like you've got completely different case. I would love to see the debug logs from both your Win machines (if issue reproduces, of course).

BTW, where the affected folders are located? Anything special like old FS (FAT32), removable storage, network drive, huge file sizes, etc?

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