All folders disconnected


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Today, while attempting to add a new device, I saw that all my folders had been disconnected on my Windows computer. I checked a Mac and a Linux device on the same account, and the folders are disconnected from those devices as well.

I have a directory that has new files added daily by the Linux host. The Mac's most recent file is from March 5, and the Windows computer has a copy from March 6. (The Mac laptop was probably off when the last file was added, but the Windows desktop is always on.) So, something may have happened around March 6. (This would have been 11 months after my original Pro license was purchased.)

I'm looking at a fairly painful recovery process as I attempt to deduplicate several gigs and thousands of files across half a dozen hosts. Can anyone speculate as to what happened?

Update: I see the following log message on the Mac from 5 days ago: "/Users/annika/Library/Application Support/BitTorrent Sync/.SyncUser[ID] is not synced with 'treebeard': time difference is more than 10 minutes." That's the final message in the log on the Mac.

I see a bunch of "PeerTLSEH … failed to find share" messages on the Linux host, but that file has no date stamps so I can't say if they're relevant messages.

Edited by Annika Backstrom
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Annika,

I wonder what exactly you mean under "disconnected" - is it that the folders got removed from Sync, or they are in "disconnected" mode - dotted in UI, or is it that peers disconnected from each other? 

I suspect that on March 5 or 6 you decided to autopdate you peers to v2.3.3? There was an issue when folders are not saved in Sync when autoupdating. 

Well, time difference means that UTC time differs for more than 10 minutes, so syncing aborts. Folder .SyncUser[timestamp] -is your identity folder, this is where sync keeps identity details. 

Where exactly you see those messages on Linux host? Sorry, there are too few details to give you a more precise analysis. Can you please write to support directly, via this for, submit a few screenshots, debug logs and details about your case? 

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Got to say Helen the update process is spotty at best.

Almost every update has required me to reconnect/recreate my sync folders and most times the update process itself is problematic.

Often clicking the notification does nothing, so you have no option to update manually.

Also this may sound stupid but how do I update manually if I have closed sync?

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1 hour ago, keep flying said:

how do I update manually if I have closed sync?

Quit Sync, go to download page, download the necessary binary, launch and proceed. 

Sorry about the inconveniences caused. The problem with identity being lost is known, and fixed in 2.3.4, so once you update to 2.3.5 (currently latest), this shall no longer bother you. 

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  • 2 months later...

Everything was working fine (except for this iOS backup issue 

until tonight and suddenly all of my folders on all of my machines are disconnected (including  the iOS app). What could cause that? Now I have to go back and re-connect them all (and I have a lot.)

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It's worse than I thought. All of my .sync folders are gone - that means all of my IgnoreList changes are gone. Not only will that take me a lot of time to fix, I don't even know what all of those were and some were very painstaking to figure out. 

This is a nightmare.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I also had this problem the other night and lost all my .sync folders as well. Strangely not all my devices were affected. In case it provides clues as to what went wrong, here is the sequence of events as I remember them. Everything had been working fine for a few months since I installed BTSync and bought a Pro(Business) license.

1. I was doing some filesystem housekeeping between my MacBook Pro and iMac both running the latest El Capitan 10.11.5. I was deleting files from my Documents folder and actually enjoying the speed of syncing between the devices as they were next to each other and I could see one update the other. 

2. After 10 mins or so I noticed that the Sync program on my MacBook Pro was showing that everything was disconnected. At this stage the iMac was still looking normal. My first thought was that I had lost WiFi connectivity or Internet connectivity but I quickly discounted that possibility. Then my iMac Sync program went the same way and everything became disconnected. 

3. I checked my iPad Sync program and it appeared to be working fine and was still connected although I'm not sure if maybe some of the selective sync folders maybe changed to disconnected. I can't quite remember how I had it set up.

4. I checked my iPhone 6 Sync program and it was completely disconnected from everything.

5. Finally I checked my Mac Mini server which is running in the MacMiniColo data centre in Las Vegas and runs encrypted folders which mirror my local folders for data backup and security reasons. This machine runs the free version of Sync because I don't want it to have anything but encrypted folders on it for security reasons.

I did some googling looking for s Sync status page to see if this was a known issue but found nothing. I then found this forum thread but couldn't register an account to make a reply because the Captcha widget was complaining the domain was wrong. I then manually hooked up all my connections again but had to go through a very unnerving "indexing" phase where all my machines tried to decide which machine had the latest files. This took overnight and well into the next day to complete and I'm now sitting down to try and figure out if any of my files got lost or damaged. I hope that the sync algorithms you use are sound and this shouldn't be a problem but I've got to tell you, this was a very very unnerving episode and greatly reduces my faith in BitTorrent Sync. I moved from a Drobo FileTransporter to BTSync because it had a great reputation for speed and reliability and that has been my experience until this happened. I hope that you can find the cause quickly and give reassurance that it won't happen again.

 

btw, my Macs were all running 2.3.6 although I updated the iMac to 2.3.7 to see if that would help reconnect (it didn't). I was afraid to do anything to my Mac Mini in the data centre in case it also disconnected everything before I had a chance to resync all my machines. I'll probably go ahead now and update all the machines to the latest software but I see from others above that this probably won't help avoid the problem.

Good luck fixing this, if I can be of assistance then please let me know as I am a professional developer and have a lot of experience of sysadmin as well so can easily extract any logs and other data that you might need.

Many thanks,

Craig.

 

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On 23 June 2016 at 1:38 PM, RomanZ said:

Craig & all,

Both 2.3.6 and 2.3.6 has a known issues causing to disconnect all the folders. It usually pops up when some device which stayed long time offline connects. I'd advise to upgrade to 2.3.8.

I tried checking for updates but it says that 2.3.7 is the latest version available. I presume in your emails you meant to say that 2.3.6 and 2.3.7 have known issues. Can I download 2.3.8 and upgrade manually or should I wait for the update checker to see 2.3.8?

Thanks,

Craig.

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Thanks Helen, I have installed 2.3.8 manually on my Macs. Is there an iOS update for this issue as well?

Are you confident you have found and resolved the cause of this issue in 2.3.8 because this is the only wobble I have seen so far in an otherwise solid product. As a developer myself I know you can never be 100% certain but you usually have a sense of whether you've nailed an issue or if you're just tightening things up in a general area. 

Many thanks,

Craig.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Happened to me a couple of months ago on one machine.  Reset all folders, and had to manually update a few files that would have been erased since they were modified on the machine that was broken before I realized the problem.

 

Just happened again after being out of town for a week or two.  Fortunately, this time I discovered it before using my laptop to modify any files.

 

Sincerely hope this bug is fixed in 2.3.8 (updated tonight from 2.3.7), as it:

 

1) Is extremely frustrating and time-consuming to fix

2) Makes it tough to trust BT Sync as a reliable means of preserving data.

 

 

FTP

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