I have a syncthing share working across multiple computers, but for some reason Linux doesn’t play nicely with this one specific folder. I’m on Linux Mint 22.1.
I already successfully synced this folder between devices, but then I realised it needed to be in a specific location. It’s for PICO-8 carts, which have to be in ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts.
So lacking any obvious “move folder” function, I just deleted the folder I’d just synced, unshared it from the windows computer, and reshared it to the linux computer. I then set the new location.
Now, syncthing won’t create the folder and throws an error: Error on folder "cart sync" (5ppwx-h54rf): folder path missing
So now it won’t accept this one folder for sharing at all, no matter where I put it. At first it was successfully shared to ~/cart sync, but now that location throws the folder path missing error as well.
I can create a test folder at ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts/test and it works perfectly, but ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts/cart sync throws the error.
Simply creating the folder changes the error to Folder Marker Missing, which isn’t much better.
Clearly this is something different to folder permissions, since syncthing obviously has permission to access the folder to create new shares.
Okay, as a workaround, sharing the folder from a second computer and getting the location correct on the first try appears to have worked.
Does anyone know what’s happening here and how to fix it in the future if this workaround doesn’t work?
Like is there a problem with relocating folders, and if so, how is it done, in general? I’m not necessarily going to have a third computer to fix this in the future and I don’t like a solution that leaves me with no information as to how it works.
folder path missing means that Syncthing can’t find the directory* you entered. Possibly a typo? Or a space in the directory name?
Folder Marker Missing means that Syncthing can’t find the Folder Marker, which it needs to make sure that a directory hasn’t gone missing, see FAQ — Syncthing documentation .
(* I use “Folder” to mean a Syncthing share, and “directory” to mean what the OS is using to organize files. A Folder must be configured to use a directory.)
For relocating a Folder, I assume that you have an existing Folder that you want to keep sharing, but that on one of the Devices you want the files to be in a different directory.
While this process shouldn’t be very risky, always make sure that you have your data backed up.
Delete the Folder (not the directory!) on the Device where you want to move the files. Move the files. Reconfigure the Folder and share it properly with your other Devices as you did before. Syncthing will scan the files and exchange indexes with the other Devices. If nothing has changed, no files will need to be synced thereafter.
Okay, so the problem I’m having with this is that when you first accept a share, syncthing should create the shared directory, yes? That’s what’s happened every time it has worked, except in this one case.
And also, if the folder path was wrong, then why does the error change when I manually place the directory there? If it was looking in the wrong place, then that shouldn’t make any difference.
This is exactly what I did when it went wrong. I removed the share folder from syncthing, moved the directory to the new path, then shared it from one of the other devices, accepted and pointed the shared folder to the new directory, but it threw the error.
I always copy & paste the path from the file explorer, so there should be no typos, and even then, ~/directory is very hard to get wrong, and that didn’t work either. It should just make the directory.
In the end I deleted the director and re-synced it thinking I’d messed something up, but that didn’t work either.
I assume this must be a temporary glitch, because when I shared from the third computer, it worked fine all of a sudden. I had tried restarting syncthing on the problem computer, but that made no difference.
Maybe in future I should try restarting syncthing on all of the computers? It seems from what you’re telling me that I didn’t actually do anything wrong and this is just a gremlin with no clear explanation.
I’m with you on everything except possibly this: ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts/cart sync .
A space in the directory name may be a no-go depending on the filesystem. I did test creating a new Folder on both Windows and MacOS with spaces in the name and didn’t have a problem – in both cases Syncthing successfully created the directory.
Yes, I considered that, but it works fine with the space. There really is no difference that I can see between the time that it worked and the time that it didn’t except for which computer I initiated the share from.