Duplicate folders

[arodier74 (Andre Rodier)]

Hello all,

I have this bug that was created a long time ago:

• The version I use is 1.29.5 on two systems
• I share a folder from Alice to Bob: works well
• A day later, Bob wants to share the same folder to Alice, with the name set as the folder ID.
• The same happen if I add Charles, I found myself with three folders named the same, but with a different ID. Some of them are using the folder ID as the folder path.

I don’t use Auto-accept any more.

I use the official Debian packages from the Syncthing Debian repository.

The folder is about 70GB, contains jpg photos from a Shotwell software.

Two folders created for the same shared folder

I enabled auto-accept to create new folders on both my devices. When I choose a folder, “Downloads” on my phone, it goes ahead and shares it and syncs with my PC, and a folder named “Downloads” is created on my PC default path. The next time that I turn my PC on and run the server, a new folder is created on the PC with the name of " [folder id] ". This I have to sync every folder twice! How can I get around this? I don’t want to turn off auto-accept since I want to be able to create folders rem…

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

None of that matches my understanding of how these things work. Some screenshots etc would be useful I think.

[arodier74 (Andre Rodier)]

I was able to fix it, by changing one host from “send only” to “send and receive”.

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

The prompt is to share the existing folder ”projects” with the device ”Franklin”, as currently it is shared with just ”Rubin”. There is no duplication being introduced.

[arodier74 (Andre Rodier)]

Thanks, maybe I don’t understand something, then. Could you tell me if the following behaviour is normal, please ?

So, it is the same folder, with the same ID.

But if I accept, it is creating another share with the same name, with the files stored in a new folder with this ID. Then, the synchronisation starts with this new empty folder, duplicating all my files.

I would have thought that because it is the same ID, the files wouldn’t be duplicated.

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

@arodier74

But if I accept, it is creating another share with the same name, with the files stored in a new folder with this ID

I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen. I want to say it’s physically impossible for Syncthing to have two folders with the same id. Again, screenshot of what happens when you accept that.

[arodier74 (Andre Rodier)]

I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen. I want to say it’s physically impossible for Syncthing to have two folders with the same id. Again, screenshot of what happens when you accept that.

Well, this make sense, the same ID is probably not happening, but the same content in two different folders, yes.

When this happened, I deleted the folder on both sides, ensured the share was in one direction only first (send only + receive only on the other side). Then I waited for the scanning and the replication to be finished before sharing again, and it did not happen any more.

Now I regret having fixed it without taking any debugging information.

I will take more screenshots and export some logs if/when it will happen again.