Syncing 1Password in a TrueCrypt container via Dropbox may have complications

wfaler

I've come across something very worrying this last week, which has never happened to me before, but has now happened to me twice inside a week:



1Password has lost ALL secure notes irretrievably for me twice (some of the notes go back 2-3 years in time, so they are not "recent" additions lost in erroneous syncs).

I have no idea what the common thread is, but my saving grace has been that I have been able to restore from my Dropbox backup.



I am currently running Version 3.8.7 (build 31168) of 1Password on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.



Further, I am storing my 1password file inside a TrueCrypt container, which is also stored in a Dropbox folder. I usually mount the TrueCrypt container on startup of my compiter and have 1Password pointed to the 1password file on the mounted TrueCrypt container.



The only thing I can think of is that I tend to put my computer into hibernate, rather than turn it off outright, but I don't see how this would be of any consequence.



I can also add that I have been running my current setup for the last year or so without any glitches until the last week, so I can only realistically put the data loss of Secure Notes specifically down to some defect which must have crept in in a recent release.



Regards

Wille

khad

Hey Wille,



I'm sorry to hear you are having this problem. Data loss is a serious thing, and we have done everything possible to minimize the possibility of this in 1Password. Backups are always a good idea (and 1Password even creates these for you by default). You can view the backups via the [b]File > Restore Backup[/b] menu item in 1Password.



One of the first things I would recommend you do is to move your data file outside of the TrueCrypt container to eliminate this as a point of failure. If the TrueCrypt container is located [i]inside[/i] your Dropbox folder and thus, presumably, being synced via Dropbox, this is very likely where the problem lies. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_worried.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':S' />



I understand that you have been running with this setup for a while with no errors, but I believe it may have only been a matter of time before this caused problems. I am not as familiar with the specifics of TrueCrypt, but I do know that vaults created by our own [url="http://agilebits.com/knox"]Knox[/url] application should not be synced via Dropbox due to the possibility of data corruption. (Knox uses standard OS X encrypted sparse bundles, so this applies to them more broadly as well.)



The reason for this is that there is nothing which locks the file to prevent simultaneous file access. This is especially pronounced if you happen to have the vault open on multiple machines at once. Dropbox will be trying to sync the encrypted data which is changing in ways that unencrypted does not. The opaqueness of the encryption already makes it difficult for Dropbox to perform delta syncing unless the file is banded (as in a sparse bundle), however, those bands are synced separately, so collisions can occur if a change in the data on one machine changes a different band than a change on another machine.



The 1Password data file itself was designed with syncing and security in mind, so the data it contains is broken up into discrete items ideal for syncing. Add or edit a single item and only that item needs to sync via Dropbox. Dropbox does not need to sync your entire data file for one small change. Placing your data file in a container or vault breaks this and can lead to complications.



Please let me know if you are still having trouble once you have moved your data file outside of the TrueCrypt container. I would love to make sure things are working well for you.



Cheers,

wfaler

I think the issue might run much deeper than TrueCrypt. I have now done away with the TrueCrypt container, yet I still suffered yet another (third time) data loss yesterday.



The data loss seems to exclusively affect Secure Notes and Wallet items. I have never suffered any data loss for logins.

khad

To help us track down the issue more quickly, could you please email us your Diagnostics Report? To generate the report from 1Password on your Mac, open 1Password and select Help > Troubleshooting > Diagnostics Report. Then attach the entire file to an email to support@agilebits.com.



Please include a link to this thread in order that we might more quickly "connect the dots" when we see your Diagnostics Report in our inbox.



[color="#FF0000"]Please do not post your Diagnostics Report in the forums, though.[/color]