This is a very bizarre issue that I’ve been having and I’m hoping someone can help me or figure out what the problem is here. So recently I got a new PC and I got everything either installed and copied over. Syncthing was like the last thing I needed to do because I had to set it up with my laptop.
Important things to note is that I am using Linux Bazzite and one of the pieces of software that I use is Calibre Library. I installed it through the software manager and when I booted it up, it said that there was a new update so I clicked the new update and I copied the upgrade command into my terminal. It seemed to fail the update so I decided that it would be best to try again a different day. However one of the things that it did so was change the name of my entire PC to something a relative managed to change on a shared PC about a decade ago that must have some kind of log in my old calibre library files when I copied it all over. And now I can’t change it back. It’s even in the terminal as my user ID.
Since then whenever I tried to log into Syncthing, it kept telling me that my username was incorrect. So I deleted everything in the local file and decided to start again. It was then I noticed that Syncthing had logged my device’s username as that ID so I changed it to my intended username. I didn’t set up a password or anything this time since it is only me that uses this PC and figured that everything was going to smooth from here on out.
I booted my PC up today and Syncthing asked for a username and password despite me not setting one up this time. I tried the username and password that I changed it to. That didn’t work. So I tried the changed device’s username, that also didn’t work.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Syncthing like I mentioned, and uninstalling and reinstalling Calibre.
Does anyone have any advice on how I can resolve this issue or even why this happened?
I’m suspecting that you have an autofill malfunction with your browser that keeps putting in a username and password in Actions / Settings / GUI. Remove the password ( Password Recovery ) and watch carefully for autofill issues when you go back to that screen.
What you need is two and three lines underneath it.
Delete the <user> and <password> lines within the <gui> section. Alternatively, run syncthing --gui-user="newuser" --gui-password="newpassword" to update credentials, then restart.
I had another look at the config file but I still can’t see it. This is all it says (i’ve taken the address and apikey out but they are there):
So I tried to update the credentials in the terminal but it doesn’t seem to work either. It says bash: syncthing: command not found.
I also, as a last ditch effort, tried to set it up using a separate browser but that hasn’t worked either. Well, it works when I run it at first (I even tested closing and reopening the browser and it still seemed to work), only to tell me that I need to log in the next day.
Command not found means that you aren’t in the Syncthing binary’s directory, and that it isn’t in your PATH. I would find the binary’s directory and try the command again there.
It doesn’t look like you have a GUI password set based on the config file snippet.
What’s the full directory path to your Syncthing config file?
Bazzite uses Flatpak for end-user apps. When Syncthing was installed using the software manager, it might have been the SyncThingy package.
Flatpak sandboxes apps, so by default, the Syncthing runtime, its config file, database and other files, along with any files you want to sync, must also be inside the same sandbox unless you override the sandbox security settings. (For more details, search this forum for “Flatpak” and/or “Steam Deck”.)
SyncThingy is a lite wrapper around Syncthing. SyncThingy might have password-protected Syncthing so that the user doesn’t inadvertently change things – e.g. the Syncthing API key that SyncThingy is using to talk to the Syncthing server.
So there’s a good chance the reason for your Syncthing login confusion is because you’ve got two configs – one you’re reviewing in a terminal window, and the other one that Syncthing is actually using inside its Flatpak sandbox.
(Hi @chaos, hope you don’t mind me jumping into this thread.)
I was using one listed in the config documentation ($HOME/.local/state/syncthing)
I made this mistake on my previous PC, installing Syncthingy through Bazaar rather than the one from the website. This had the same issue. But at some point I did delete those files and downloaded one from the website. I think it was the tar.gz version.
That’s what I used to install Syncthing this time instead of going through Bazaar again.
With Bazzite being an atomic OS, user files might not necessarily follow the regular locations, so just in case, ask Syncthing for the file paths it’s using:
