How to safely downgrade on Android?

[chbly]

@tomasz86

You cannot downgrade apps reliably on Android (unless the device is rooted, which allows you to fully back up and restore app data). With the Syncthing app’s built-in export/import functionality, you basically back the config up but not the database.

My device is rooted, and I actually happen to have an oandbackup of syncthing from before upgrading to 1.27.6.2, however the local filesystem is definitely out of sync from the state of the database at that time. I didn’t mention it because it seemed even more risky than starting with an empty database, but maybe it’s worth considering?

@tomasz86

This means that if you were in the middle of synchronisation, e.g. you modified and deleted some files locally, and those changes haven’t been synced to other devices yet, then after you restore the config on a new installation, Syncthing will treat the modified files as conflicts, which you’ll need to resolve manually, and the deleted files will be re-downloaded from other devices.

That’s pretty much what I was afraid of. However, in this specific case, it might not be that bad. Since there are no changes on the remote side since the last sync, and since the newest file wins, I should be able to simply delete all *.sync-conflict-* files, and I should end up back where I started, right?

I don’t feel great about it, but it might be the best option in this case.

@tomasz86

@chbly

I recently upgraded syncthing-android from 1.27.6 to 1.27.6.2 and it doesn’t work right anymore.

Can you describe what the issue is specifically? There should be zero difference between these two versions of the app. Also, v1.27.10 is already available on F-Droid, so you may want to try upgrading to the current version and see what happens first.

@tomasz86

There should be zero difference between these two versions of the app.

That’s what I thought, too. But it worked fine a week ago, I upgraded to 1.27.6.2, and now it doesn’t work. Same config, same folders… sure, some files were added and modified but it’s roughly the same amount of data as it was before. I can’t think of anything else that could have caused it.

@tomasz86

Can you describe what the issue is specifically?

Basically, it can’t scan large directories (I’m talking like 2-5GB) anymore. Usually within seconds to minutes, the daemon will stop responding; the daemon log is blank, Android log says “connection refused” on API requests, and the web UI says ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. When I restart it, sometimes it will say “The daemon is taking very long to load” or something like that.

If I quickly press pause on the large folders while it’s starting up, I can get it to run normally and sync small folders as long as the large ones are paused. As soon as I unpause one of them, the the daemon will soon stop responding again. I should note that even scanning small folders takes much longer than it used to.

One time I was able to get it to successfully scan and sync a 4GB directory, after dozens of tries. Haven’t been able to since. (Again, 1.27.6 worked fine with these very same folders.)

I turned on the “scanner” STTRACE option, but I only have limited time before the daemon stops responding and the daemon log goes blank (“— beginning of main”).

@tomasz86

Also, v1.27.10 is already available on F-Droid, so you may want to try upgrading to the current version and see what happens first.

I upgraded just now, but it seems to be having the exact same problem.