I have a small home network of several laptops, tablets, and phones. One tablet and phone only get powered up once a month and sync just fine. But two of the laptops may be more of a hassle. One had been offline since 2024-10-13, and when I powered it back up on 2025-02-12, it doesn’t resync. The other laptops say its status is “Disconnected (Unused)” and I don’t see any way to revive it. I paused and resumed it on a different laptop; no difference. A phone doesn’t do any better.
I have a second laptop which is in for repairs and probably won’t get it back until next week. It shows as “Disconnected (Inactive)”. A third laptop powers on over weekends and shows as “Disconnected” but always resyncs when I start it up.
Is there any way to tell the current laptops to resume talking to the one that has been offline for four months?
Do I have to delete that node and reintroduce it to all the nodes?
Will I have this problem with the one out for repair that shows as “Disconnected (Inactive)”?
There’s no code in syncthing that disables, removes or deactivates a device that has been offline for an indefinite amount of time. Disconnected (unused) means two things:
You’re not currently connected to that device
You have not shared any folders with that device (e.g. it is “not used by yourself”)
Syncthing will still connect to that device if it comes online, but as no folders are shared with that device the connection won’t do any syncing - there’s nothing to sync, unless you share some folders with that device.
Disconnected (Inactive) just means that the device is currently not connected, and hasn’t been connected in quite a while (more than a week I think). Similar to the other state, syncing will reconnect and resume syncing with that device, once both devices are online and reachable at the same time.
From your description, it sounds that you may actually be confusing your devices. Re-check the device IDs on the affected devices, whether they truly match (i.e. the remote device ID displayed by syncthing matches the local device ID shown on that device). Also check what folders are shared with what devices, as you apparently are not sharing folders when you think you are.
Thanks, I’ll check all that. But this old laptop was syncing perfectly four months ago, and the only change to any of the nodes is this one coming back and that other node in repair.
You are 100% right – I had forgotten that I changed the WiFi access point a month after shutting down the laptop.
Thank you for being so polite about it, and it’s good to know there is nothing which cares about a missing node enough to prevent it from coming back from the dead.