For reasons that I do not really understand the syncing messed up and my only solution is to start syncing from scratch.
The configuration is a local sending and a remote receiving.
One of the things I tried was to remove the shared folder on the remote receiving, replace it with an empty folder by same name and sync. That has not worked, also for reasons I do not understand.
The other option that occurs to me is to manually copy the shared folder from the local to the remote and start syncing after that..
If neither is the solution, can someone pls enlighten me as to how I can achieve this?
While you’re at it, I’d also suggest checking https://docs.syncthing.net/intro and possibly other entries in the Docs if something ends up being unclear to you.
I am on Windows 10 desktop. By shut down you mean Stop it? I found the config file – is the delete of this file the only thing I gotta do? Does ST preserve all the info – shared folders, paths, receive/send, etc? I do not have to recreate all that, just delete CONFIG and sync, right?
I have read all that stuff, but I am not technical enough to understand all of it. I have installed ST exactly per the instructions, but for some reason something did not work out and I have spent a lot of time and effort understanding why and could not – that’s why I am here.
I meant shutting down using the GUI. Otherwise, you can just kill all syncthing.exe processes using the Task Manager. I’m assuming here that you’re not using a wrapper like SyncTrayzor or Syncthing Tray but just the bare Syncthing executable.
When it comes to the config, then no, as you said you wanted to “start from scratch”. Removing the whole config folder including everything inside it would do just that. In other words, after removing the config folder, if you start Syncthing again, you will have to configure everything from the very beginning.
If you want to preserve the config, then, to be honest, it’s really unclear what you actually want to do… because leaving the config is the contrary of “starting from scratch” .
Also, to be frank, if you’re not very technical, then I don’t think you should be playing with “Advanced” options like “Send Only” and “Receive Only”, etc. There’s a reason why the default folder type is “Send & Receive” and the two others are hidden under the “Advanced” tab. They can be useful, of course, but if you’re not careful, you could easily cause a disaster (e.g. by pressing the “Override Changes” button on the Send Only side while not fully understanding what it’s going to do).
Perhaps “starting from scratch” was not the best expression of what I want to do.
My local laptop is my working system – it continuously changes. My remote laptop is a backup clone that at the end of a day I sync to the local, so that in case happens to my local, I can just pick up where I left with the remote (when I stop working, I do the sync).
Something messed up the syncing and do not know how to sync them to match now, I get failures, not in sync, conflicts, etc. I want to bring the current content of the shared folders on the local to the remote – perhaps outside of ST-- so that they match and re-start the syncing from that new remote = local point on. Obviously, I do not want to lose the configuration.
Hope this makes sense–need to know if this is feasible, or I really need to start from scratch.
Can you post screenshots of the Syncthing web GUI from both sides? This will help better understand the situation and give you proper instructions on what to do next. Please make sure to unfold the relevant folder information.
Well, I do not think this will help because, as I said, the current status is messed up, which is why I want to get away from it. It’s not gonna tell you what actually happened – I tried to figure that out for several days to no avail. I even tried to compare the folders on both sides to see what is the mismatch, but there’s dozens of files involved and without that the status on the GUI won’t tell you anything.
But if you really think it’ll help, I will post the screenshots.
Screenshots are always welcome, plus I think you may be able to simply override the unwanted changes on the remote laptop. It’s also important to see what exactly you’re trying to sync, because according to what you’ve written, there should be no local changes on the remote laptop, yet they are there, meaning that something is wrong (e.g. maybe you’re trying to one-way sync your whole user folder, and that’s not going to work, because the OS makes changes in there on its own).
I do not think your understanding is incorrect., my explanation may not good enough. Sometimes there should be syncing and there isn’t, sometimes there is, but it does not update the remote. The end result is there is no match of the remote with the local.
I am sharing 4 folders. Over a period of months after setup I have been syncing to keep the remote identical to the local. Only the local changes, and the syncing should have kept the remote in sync with the changes on the local. But it has not.
Now whatever I do syncing does not bring the remote in line with the local, probably due to accumulation of problems over time. Either there should be syncing and there isn’t – nothing happens even though the local has changed. There are failures, out of sync after scanning for no obvious reasons. When I compare the content of folders on the local and remote, they are not the same. I suspect it’s a lost cause – the initial state was problematic and problems accumulated – lost cause.
What I want to do to is manually make the 4 folders on the remote identical to the local-- call this Time(0)–and start syncing after that, without losing the config.But I am not sure it’ll work because ST was set at setup and is in the system and history. So I am looking for a way to get rid of that without losing the ST install setup.
IOW, I want to bring the whole shabang to a situation where the folders are identical and start the syncing as if there is no history – which is what I meant by “from scratch”, but without resetting the whole ST.
If there are problems with synchronization, then the most important step is finding the cause and fixing it. Resetting to some initial state won’t help you if the problems reappear because the root cause has not been fixed. So I’d suggest it’s better to identify the actual errors (we can help, given enough info like screenshots) instead of “paving over” to get rid of them for the short term.
You seem to be going on a hunch of yours, a feeling of needing some specific condition restored. But Syncthing is software and works deterministically, as programmed. Any error it reports or encounters has a reason, which needs fixing first, not just hiding the message.
With your configuration of send-only / receive only, there will be a button for changes that are not desired according to the syncing direction. That may fix your differing states easily, but should be used with caution once you have understood what is the actual mismatch.
Other errors like Failed Items or Out Of Sync Items have a clickable counter in the folder panel. That opens a list with detailed info about the cause. That’s where I’d start, in addition to screenshots of the folder and device panels from both sides.
Yes, I looked at all those changes and (1) I cannot figure out what ST did and what the discrepancies mean in terms of fixing the problem. Sometimes I get “Up to Date”, yet when I compare the remote and local shared folders, there are discrepancies. Sometimes files have changed on the local but when I resume ST, no syncing happens. Nothing makes sense to me and I do not understand what ST does and how to correct it.
Part of the problem is that only one shared folder is user folder (my data), the rest are app folder that apps create. They contain many files and it’s impossible to compare the content and figure out the discrepancies and how they happened.
I have not been able to figure out things by looking at the ST GUI and pressing those buttons even when I press the problem buttons. What I get is inconsistent with the actual content of the folders. It’s a mess, and I doubt it’s fixable. But I do not have the stomach to reconfigure ST.
I am attaching the ST GUI screenshots of the local and remote shared folder with data. I cannot make anything out of it. When I compare the folders directly, they are different well beyond what the button shows, so I have no clue what ST did. If you can figure it out, pls let me know,
In any case, I think I must start from 0 but I do not have the stomach to reinitialize ST – too much of a hassle. Is there any work around it? Pls keep in mind that the local is fine. It’s only the remote that is messed up.
PS: I do, of course, make sure the apps whose folders I sync do not run during the syncing.
What happens if you unpause the remote device and let the sync complete?
Also, I’m seeing that you’re trying to sync the OneDrive folder. Is OneDrive also running and synchronising the same folder? This is fine if you’ve got it running only on one of the two devices, but if both Syncthing and OneDrive are active on both computers, then nothing good is going to come out of it, as they will be fighting with each other, trying to sync the very same location.
What you are seeing in the screenshots is the result of unpausing both computers and letting the syncing complete. It’s the result of the sync.
Sorry, I confused you with the name: OneDrive is just the name of a drive that I share – I long got rid of MS OneDrive, but because one of the drives that it named OneDrive was full of data I got lazy and did not change the name. There no MS OneDrive, there is only data there, and nothing accessing/changing anything there while I sync.
When I do a sync, I stop EVERYTHING on both computers (nothing changes), I start ST on both computers, I start the GUI in the browser in both computers, and I unpause them. This should work, but does not.
I got some reference to a ‘reset database’ in ST – could that be part of solution?
The way Syncthing is supposed to work is actually continuous synchronization, i.e. not pausing in between regularly. The state while disconnected may not be telling us everything that happens while connected.
If you do want to make Syncthing idle while you’re working on the files, it’s much better to pause the folders, not the remote device. Otherwise, changes will still be noticed and scans happen constantly in the background.
That could be part of a solution, yes. But it only makes sense if the underlying issues are fixed. It’s more a tool for situations where Syncthing might have messed up its own database state because of some bug. But I don’t see that in your situation.
Screenshots while the devices are connected would be a next helpful step. The global state counts should always match, but we cannot reason about that while disconnected.
And have you checked what the Locally Changed Items count reveals when clicking on it? Looks a bit like there were two directories deleted from NEWSYS and now all items within those are “Locally Changed”. Pressing the Revert Local Changes button should restore those.
It can be used like that, although it is much more tedious than just having it running continuously.
I would pause it only on the “local” end, as it won’t do much, starting right after boot on the remote end.
And you need to distinguish between pausing folders and pausing a remote device. I see no good reason for synchronizing folders one after the other, you can just unpause all of them at once. Then when they’re up to date, pause all again, but only on the local end.
No need to stop Syncthing altogether when you’re already pausing folders. That’s redundant, as nothing will be scanned whether the process is terminated, or all folders paused.
Pausing a remote device OTOH still allows the folders to be scanned on changes or in regular intervals, as configured. Only the connection to the other end is refused. Which again is redundant, as you already shut down the remote device when not needed. But in your screenshot from NEWSYS, the remote device OLDSYS is paused (can’t see the other direction). I wouldn’t do that, but rather pause folders only.
Overall, you’re taking a belt-and-suspenders approach with so many levels to stop it from working - easy to forget one of those and cause it to not work at all.
My suspicion is that you’re unpausing folders sequentially, but forgetting to unpause the device as well, so no updates are even communicated between them. For sync to work, the same folder needs to be running and the two devices actually connected, all at the same time. Plus, you have those locally changed items on the receive-only end, which should best be investigated while all other prerequisites are fulfilled.
Running it continuously will keep both computers on and ST running while I use the local, which is what I want to avoid. I am more comfortable syncing at intervals of my choice, rather than while I work. I sync as part of my regular backups policy which goes beyond syncing.
To make sure I understand, can you clarify ‘pausing a remote device’ and ‘pausing its folders’?
The reason I sync individual folders is precisely to avoid things happening simultaneously that increase the chance of mistakes. Once I get into a routine, I may stop that. But actually I can only sync 3 folders together and one separately. It’s a bit complicated, but one folder is the active Brave profile and one is the Firefox profile. So I must sync Brave profile through Firefox and Firefox profile via Brave to avoid locked files.
I know it’s redundant, but ST does not show when it’s stopped or when it runs on the browser GUI and if I forget it’s running I may make mistakes.
You could be right. So can you, given my procedure, give me a step my step sequence to achieve what I want?
And if that won’t fix the problems, how I can fix them without losing the configuration?
Alright, let’s get you on a sensible user interface first. Install SyncTrayzor version 2 so you get a tray icon that indicates whether Syncthing is running. It can be used to stop and start it through the icon menu, and it has an integrated browser view so you can control Syncthing independent of Brave or Firefox.
A alternative is Syncthing Tray, which can manage several instances and has a quick overview panel with common direct actions, without even starting the Web GUI. But that is more complicated, I’d recommend it as a second, more advanced choice if you need the flexibility. If you have access to both Windows laptops directly, SyncTrayzor on both will be fine.
To understand the folder / device pausing: The Web GUI has panels on the left for the folders. Each has a Pause or Resume button when unfolded, plus a Pause All / Resume All button below them. That’s what you should be using, if you want to keep it running. If you stop Syncthing completely (through SyncTrayzor), no pausing is necessary at all.
On the right, there’s a panel for the instance you’re looking at (This Device), and panels for each paired remote device below. These also have a button for Pause / Resume and the respective … All variants. Make sure these are all NOT paused and keep it that way.
Configure SyncTrayzor to start on boot on the “remote” laptop (receive only). It will be running but doing nothing, no need to touch it at all.
Start SyncTrayzor manually on the send-only side (OLDSYS). It will start syncing right then. You can watch its GUI to see when the folders are completely scanned. Once the remote device panel for NEWSYS reaches Up To Date, you can stop Syncthing / SyncTrayzor here and go on powering down the NEWSYS laptop.
Once this basic syncing works, we can look at the outstanding differences.
Thank you for all the advice. A few things before I start to make sure I understand.
I understand the advantages if Trayzor, but I recall that I checked it out when I started to use ST, and my impression was that I could do without another piece of the puzzle. I got comfortable with the browser interface and I st three shortcuts on the desktop for starting, stopping and starting the GUI, so it’s not much different than the tray. However, because you recommend it, I will install Trayzor and see if it makes my life easier.
I’ve been using those buttons. Do you mean that Pause all is device pausing? Yes, I understand if I stop ST no point in pausing. I stop ST between syncs to avoid mistakes and release resources (old laptops with limited memory).
OK, I understand the procedure and will try it when I get some time. My understanding is that once the sync completes I shut down the remote and Trayzor manually, but does Trayzor also shut down ST, or do I have to do it manually?
Thanks again. I will let you know as soon as I’m done.
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