Issues with ecrypted target folders: Unexpected items, inconsistent state. and conflicts

Hi all,

I’m having trouble getting encrypted folders to work; specifically, I’m seeing “unexpected items” errors and “.sync-conflict” files, even though (IIUC) syncthing shouldn’t be creating such files in an ecrypted remote. I hope this is the right place to ask.

The issue happens relatively consistently in normal use, making encrypted remotes unusable in my setup, but unfortunately I haven’t found a consistent repro. Instead, I have a recipe that consistently leads to sync-conflict files being created, which hopefully is a useful start:

  • Create a folder on the source machine. Share it with the destination machine, with a password.

  • Accept the share on the destination machine. At this point, the global state will say “0” on the destination machine, and synchronization will not start until syncthing is restarted. I suspect this is the source of the issue, but I’m not sure how to debug it: Screenshot from 2022-11-11 10-54-45

    … this is despite the source having non-empty state: Screenshot from 2022-11-11 10-55-07

  • Restart syncthing (systemctl restart syncthing) and wait for synchronization to complete: Screenshot from 2022-11-11 10-55-33

  • Remove the folder, stop syncthing, and delete (rm -r) the test/.stfolder.removed-20221111-105603/ folder on the destination’s file system

  • Restart syncthing, accept the folder again and put it in the same path as before. Screenshot from 2022-11-11 10-58-20

    … notice how the “global state” is wrong again

  • Restart syncthing again, and syncthing will create conflict files: Screenshot from 2022-11-11 10-58-49

    … notice the 4 in local state. Indeed, on the destination’s file system, we have:

    # ls -R test
    test:
    6.syncthing-enc  Q.syncthing-enc
    
    test/6.syncthing-enc:
    T0
    
    test/6.syncthing-enc/T0:
    NK2FKOD9J4GQKEN7F4S5LKG1G  NK2FKOD9J4GQKEN7F4S5LKG1G.sync-conflict-20221111-105829-
    
    test/Q.syncthing-enc:
    E7
    
    test/Q.syncthing-enc/E7:
    S97KM983CLH7R2QP9PVTPFMA0  S97KM983CLH7R2QP9PVTPFMA0.sync-conflict-20221111-105829-
    

I realize that the recipe above is stressing syncthing, what with removing and re-adding folders. But it also leads to an easy reproduction of the problem I observe (but can’t reliably reproduce) on my normal folders: conflict files and unexpected items.

Is this a bug, and if so how can I diagnose it? It would seem that the “global state 0” might be the root of the issue, but how do I diagnose that?

Thanks a lot!

  • Syncthing version: syncthing v1.22.1 “Fermium Flea” (go1.19.2 linux-arm64) deb@build.syncthing.net 2022-11-02 06:27:53 UTC [noupgrade]

  • OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) (Armbian)

Does it look similar to https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/8278? Does the broken state persist even after restarting Syncthing?

It looks similar, yes. But note that i"m experiencing problems even when synchronizing to empty / newly created folders.

The problem does persist after restarting as well as pausing / restarting; in fact, the recipe I posted includes a few restarts already ^^

While I only have a reproducible recipe for the sync-conflict files above, in my non-artifical attempts a reproducing the bug I’ve seen all sorts of other issues:

In the last case syncthing was spinning the hard drive a few seconds or so while attempting a sync, but nothing progressed.

This is all in a two-peers setting on LAN (so no missing peers or device).

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