Syncing paused on PC in use but BTSync on remote PC is constantly active

[mertzi]

Hello!

I find it odd that I don't get one single result from searching "pause" or "pause syncing". Maybe something going on with my browser.

I have noticed something that I wouldn't call a bug but maybe an inconvenience. I normally pause syncing when I use files in my synced folders and resume syncing when I'm done. I have found that even if BT sync is paused on the PC I use, BT Sync on the remote PC (where sync is not paused) is constantly active and the "sync wheel" is rotating all the time. There are no actual transfers going on, but if I look into history on the remote PC it tells all the activity that happens on the PC I use e.g. "Home added file...", "Home updated file..." etc. Then when I'm finished and resume syncing, files are transfered and both BTSyncs go into proper idle and the wheel stops rotating.

I don't know if this is how it is supposed to act and the only drawback is that it prevents the remote PC from going into a low powered state and let the drive spin down. Sessions can last for hours before I resume syncing and it seems kind of unnecessary to have both machines active at the same time when I only use one. I don't see how the logging could not happen on the PC in use only and then when sync is resumed all that information could be passed to the remote PC.

Thanks

 

Edit: I searched for "paus" (how it is spelled in my native language) and not "pause" which explains the lack of results. I only found one thread that seems related though and it still doesn't explain the constant activity.

 

[besweeet]

I'm curious about this as well. I was under the impression that, when the source is paused, syncing should not be happening anywhere. I have 3 instances: one parent (that pushes new files out), and two childs (to receive the modified files). When the parent is paused, and file changes are made, they're still pushed to the two children... I'll also occasionally notice "Indexing" next to "Paused."

[mertzi]

On 3/10/2016 at 6:13 PM, besweeet said:

I'm curious about this as well. I was under the impression that, when the source is paused, syncing should not be happening anywhere. I have 3 instances: one parent (that pushes new files out), and two childs (to receive the modified files). When the parent is paused, and file changes are made, they're still pushed to the two children... I'll also occasionally notice "Indexing" next to "Paused."

For the time being I exit BT Sync before sessions and restart it when I'm finished. Although I don't think it's the best solution because it doesn't monitor in real time. The best solution IMO would be letting the paused BT Sync index whatever changes are made and then when sync is resumed transfer all this information and then sync. It seems they have made it to go the other way around, that changes are monitored on those machines where BT Sync is NOT paused. It might even be the purpose, that the pause function shall prevent to sync files that have been changed on a remote PC. If that's the case then the best solution is to pause sync on the remote PC instead. A lot more clicks though.

[Helen]

Pausing stops file transfers only, but it doesn't stop folder rescan, merging , peers checking their files with other peers and determining if there is something to sync. Also, if you add/delete files to/from the folder, Sync will still index them, so you can see indexing next to pause.

Plus, when you pause one of the peers - others are not paused, they continue working and syncing. So when you pause local PC, remote PCs will show activity, wheel rotating as you will be adding the files. 

[mertzi]

Thank you for clarifying! I'll continue exiting BTSync before work sessions then. How more likely is it that BTSync will miss changes if I exit BTSync and then launch it afterwards, instead of just pausing sync?

[Helen]

Sync will get all the updates/changes after starting and scanning the folder. Be careful with updating files when Sync is off, if they are on external USB drive. 

[besweeet]

CPU usage continues to be too high due to constant indexing of files. It just doesn't want to stop. RAM usage also grows too big (1.7GB+ at one point). At the moment, BTS on one of our VMs is averaging 40% CPU usage while using over 900MB of RAM.

I just checked %appdata%\BitTorrent Sync Service for the first time, and noticed hundreds of zipped xxxxxx.journal.zip files and compressed log files. Opening sync.log showed more than 500,000 lines. It looks like BTS kept indexing a cache folder. I added the directory to IgnoreList, and BTS is down to 0% CPU usage for the first time ever. Pretty happy right now.

[Helen]

besweeet,

Great! Just for the record: is it home folder that you sync and is it "appdata" that you added to ignorelist? If yes, then RAM and CPU issue is pretty understandable. 

[besweeet]

6 hours ago, Helen said:

besweeet,

Great! Just for the record: is it home folder that you sync and is it "appdata" that you added to ignorelist? If yes, then RAM and CPU issue is pretty understandable. 

The folder that's not added to IgnoreList was /wp-content/cache for WordPress. According to the logs, it kept trying to index files that were there at first, but were later removed, and it wouldn't stop trying to index the original files.

[Helen]

besweeet,

Trying to sync someone's cache is pretty hard, cause cache is usually constantly altering and is generally not unavailable for Sync. So at some moment Sync just failed to even know about something being deleted from there, and kept on trying to get to know. Yes, better ignore cache folders. 

[mertzi]

I use portable versions of a lot of apps and keep them in sync between my two PC's (never on external drives!). The most important is Firefox and I've experienced the cache problem, that's why I started using the pause function in the first place. A lot of json and sqlite files which are part of the cache would become conflicted and I would see a lot of corresponding files with the extension !bt (I don't remember exactly) not being removed when I exited Firefox. BTSync on both machines then would just continue trying to sync until I deleted the bt-files manually. Does this happen because the cache files are in use and are constantly changed and BTSync can't keep up? I added some of the problematic extensions to the ignore list and I think it worked but now with the exit method it doesn't matter. I haven't seen any issues yet, besides forgetting to launch BTSync on occasion.

[Helen]

mertzi,

Yes to your question, and we cannot account for how other apps use their cache. Sync just reads the file, compares it with others and tries to sync it. At this moment a dozen of updates notifications can arrive, so Sync has to process them all and sync the files again, which can lead to the problems you've described.