I’m really confused and I seem to have issues with “folder marker missing” and “folder path missing” when I’m trying to setup Syncthing.
Right now I have a ‘Zelda3’ folder correctly Syncthing between my MacBook Pro and my Linux server. However, I’m trying to add my Steam Deck and it’s giving me problems.
The error is ‘folder path missing’ but it does exist and should have permission.
The folder is /home/deck/.var/app/io.github.snesrev.Zelda3/data/saves.
What can be causing this error?
The log doesn’t provide much additional information:
2023-12-13 13:42:58 Failed initial scan of sendreceive folder "Zelda3" (pfrhq-hzk63)
2023-12-13 13:42:58 Error on folder "Zelda3" (pfrhq-hzk63): folder path missing
2023-12-13 13:49:17 folderconfiguration.go:116 basic /home/deck/.var/app/io.github.snesrev.Zelda3/data/saves Stat . <nil> stat /home/deck/.var/app/io.github.snesrev.Zelda3/data/saves: no such file or directory
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ ls /home/deck/.var/app/io.github.snesrev.Zelda3/data/saves -aFl
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 deck deck 4096 Dec 13 13:44 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 deck deck 4096 Dec 13 13:32 ../
(deck@steamdeck ~)$
Thanks for the fast reply. I agree it seems to be something related to sandbox permissions (I’m running Syncthig using a Flatpak). I see a related issue here.
I’ve added “~/.var/app” explicitly to the Flatpak permissions and now it’s indicating the folder marker is missing.
Can you explain a bit about the purpose of that folder? (.stfolder?)
My other devices (MacBook Pro and Linux server) have this folder created but it’s empty so I’m unsure the purpose?
The purpose is to indicate that the folder is still present and OK, so that we don’t interpret an unmounted disk as averything-was-deleted for example. It is created automatically when a folder is created, or on startup if the folder has always been empty. That you get the complaint means that Syncthing thinks there should be some data in there. You can just create the marker, but beware that if there were things there before that are not there any more Syncthing will consider them deleted and sync that to other devices.
Thanks so much… I’ve removed/re-shared the folder and it seems to be working now. I think the key was specifically adding ~/.var/app permissions to the flatpak.
Can I ask two other quick questions?
What is the correct ignore pattern to exclude a folder and all files inside? For example, if the folder is “foo” should I add “foo” or “foo/*” ?
Also, I’ve seen this mentioned a few times but I’m not sure if there is a solution: can I ignore everything by default but only ignore a specific file (or two) ?