I have 10 instances of Syncthing, and 10 folders shared (not all devices have all folders). I enthusiastically set everyone as an introducer for everyone else, and that seemed like a good idea at the time.
However now I want to delete one device from all the others. But on each Syncthing instance, I can’t delete the device, because of the introducers. Even if I follow the chain of introducers, I end up back where I started.
It seems the only way I can delete a device is to go to each Remote Device (9) on each device (10) and turn them off as introducers. Then for each device, remove the remote device I wish to forget.
Is there a better way?
Should I not have been so generous in using introducers? Is it better to maybe only have one introducer?
You can disconnect every device from every device and remove the device in question from every device. When they all connect to each other again, there should be no one to re-introduce that device. Other than that, I don’t think there is a solution besides removing the introducer flag.
Nowadays, introducer “clients” will remove a device when it’s removed on the introducer that added it. But, with a nest of introducers all introducing to each other, this might be difficult to unwind…
I had the exact same issue previously with my cluster of devices. I have since unticked most of the introducer checkboxes so as to make it easier to remove devices when I want to (often when I’ve reinstalled the OS on my phone). I think it might be a good idea to improve the documentation around the introducer feature so that this potential problem is more obvious to first time users who may otherwise enthusiastically tick introducer.