Knox: Will not load file/folder list after initial catalog mount

bcostello

Hello - my apologies if this was covered somewhere, but I wasn't able to find it.



I have the newest version of Knox (2.1.9 (159)) on Mac OS 10.7.2. I have a vault that is 110gb, and since upgrading to Lion 10.7.2, I am having the following problem:



1. After booting the computer, I can browse the hard drive that my knox vault is stored on fine. I open my vault, and it works great, as expected.



2. I then eject my vault, and everything is still fine.



3. I go to mount my vault again (without having restarted or logged out/in), and it mounts fine, but, when I open it (any folder on it), I just get the spinner at the bottom right and the listing of files folders never shows (even after waiting 15 minutes). Ejecting and re-mounting the vault does not fix this, no matter how many times. ALSO, even after I eject it, I have the same file-listing issue only on the drive that holds the vault.. spinner with no file list (this is very bizarre).



4. After restarting the computer, it is all fixed: the initial mount of the vault is great, and browsability of the disk is great. But once I eject the vault the first time, and re-mount it, then I get the spinners and no file listings again - both on the Knox volume, and on the host drive. Given my repeated testing, I really do believe that the inability for the host drive to display its listing is related to Knox (even though the vault is not mounted).



Any help you can provide? Any other information that would be helpful?

Thanks in advance.

Benjamin

khad

Hey Benjamin,



Can you confirm that you are only seeing this behavior with Knox running? Or does the same thing happen when you are not running Knox and merely double-click the vault in Finder?

bcostello

Sorry for the delayed response - I was following the topic, but had no notifications set up.



I booted, quit Knox, mounted the catalog (worked fine), ejected it, and the problem is still there -- even without Knox running.



Thank you so much for your help!

khad

No worries about the delay. Thanks for following up.



Knox creates standard OS X encrypted disk images, so if the problem exists even when Knox is not running, it sounds like it is either a problem in OS X (unlikely) or the file may be damaged. I'll see if one of our Knox experts can help further, but if you have a backup from which to restore that may be the simplest solution.



Were you by any chance syncing the vault through Dropbox? (I know. It's pretty big for that, but I thought I would ask. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />) Or have you been backing up the vault via Time Machine?

bcostello

Thanks for the info Khad. The vault isn't on dropbox, but I do have Backblaze backing up the real-disk files that constitute the volume. I have never had to restore from there, so if that had some effect on the volume it would have had to mess up my local disk copy - is that plausible?



Thanks so much for your help!

MartyS

Thanks for the additional feedback, Benjamin! And welcome to the forums by the way! <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/emoticon-0123-party.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='(party)' />





Knox provides a front-end graphical interface to the use of either sparse bundle or DMG encrypted "storage". It remembers which vaults you've worked with and can even re-mount ones upon login that were open when you logged out or shut your system down. It will even optionally make backups of them... something that many people simply forget to do on their own.



What you're seeing is indicative of something that the Finder is having troubles with within the vault. By seeing the same thing even when the Knox application is not running we have removed the possibility that its active monitoring of devices is even at play. Since Knox has no background or "kernel" components, if the application is not running then it's not running at all.



I would recommend at this point mounting the vault upon a fresh reboot while you have full access to the contained files, and create a new vault and transfer all the files from the old to the new. Then see if anything similar happens with the new vault.



Please keep in mind that vaults should never be mounted by two or more systems at the same time, as the Finder and Spotlight on both systems may make small changes behind the scenes that might not sync properly so care must be taken if you're syncing it with Dropbox and maybe with Backblaze as well -- I don't have any experience with the latter to know if that's even remotely (pun is, and is not intended) possible.

bcostello

Thanks so much for your help and advice. I set up the volume to be skipped by backblaze, and also by spotlight, so hopefully that will prevent corruption in the future. In the meantime, I took your advice and copied all the contents to a new image. Sadly, I am still having the same problem, but I found that if I "Relaunch" the finder, it fixes it. I am going to assume it's a Lion bug (maybe a conflict with something else I have installed), and it will hopefully get resolved at some point.



Thanks again! Cheers,

Benjamin

khad

Best of luck, Benjamin. If we can be further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!