"Server is locked" and Little sync disaster

[Josep M. Fontana]

A while ago I sent a message asking about the possibility of using
Dropbox to sync notes across different computers. I was warned of the
dangers of doing it and now I'm suffering the consequences of not
following that sound piece of advice.

The thing is, I had two laptops connected to the net at the same time
but I was not using Tomboy in both of them at the same time. All I did
was to try to synchronize the contents of the Dropbox folder where I had
saved a copy of the Tomboy notes (by synchronizing the notes with that
folder in my main computer). I thought that as long as I didn't try to
modify a note from the two different computers at the same time, I
wouldn't have a problem. But the synchronization process went array and
Tomboy hung in the middle of the synchronization without finishing. I
was not aware of this, but Dropbox deleted the contents that had not
been synchronized from the Dropbox subfolder where I kept my Tomboy
notes in the second computer. What I think happened is the following: I
restarted Tomboy and tried to sync again; Tomboy had imported some of
the files in the synchronization attempt but not all of them; the
synchronization copied the files it considered more recent to the sync
folder and deleted the ones that had not been imported in the first
synchronization attempt?

Anyway, I will probably never know what really happened, but to make the
story short  I went back to my first computer and continued to work with
Tomboy, then when I clicked on synchronization I realized there were a
bunch of notes (and a lot of hours of work) that had disappeared.

I was now trying to recover the notes by attempting to restore deleted
contents in Dropbox via the web interface but when I try to sync with
the Dropbox folder I continuously get a message that says "Server is
locked. One of your other computers is currently synchronizing. Please
wait 2 minutes and try again". But I have only one computer on. I have
even disabled Dropbox. So, I don't know what the problem is.

Besides helping me solve this problem, if there is anybody that has
found a good system to synchronize notes between different computers, I
would appreciate hearing from him/her. I work with three different
computers and finding a good synchronization system is essential for me.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Josep M.
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[Sandy Armstrong]

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 12:52 AM, Josep M <josepm.fontana@...> wrote:

> A while ago I sent a message asking about the possibility of using Dropbox
> to sync notes across different computers. I was warned of the dangers of
> doing it and now I'm suffering the consequences of not following that sound
> piece of advice.
>
> The thing is, I had two laptops connected to the net at the same time but I
> was not using Tomboy in both of them at the same time. All I did was to try
> to synchronize the contents of the Dropbox folder where I had saved a copy
> of the Tomboy notes (by synchronizing the notes with that folder in my main
> computer). I thought that as long as I didn't try to modify a note from the
> two different computers at the same time, I wouldn't have a problem. But the
> synchronization process went array and Tomboy hung in the middle of the
> synchronization without finishing. I was not aware of this, but Dropbox
> deleted the contents that had not been synchronized from the Dropbox
> subfolder where I kept my Tomboy notes in the second computer. What I think
> happened is the following: I restarted Tomboy and tried to sync again;
> Tomboy had imported some of the files in the synchronization attempt but not
> all of them; the synchronization copied the files it considered more recent
> to the sync folder and deleted the ones that had not been imported in the
> first synchronization attempt?
>
> Anyway, I will probably never know what really happened, but to make the
> story short  I went back to my first computer and continued to work with
> Tomboy, then when I clicked on synchronization I realized there were a bunch
> of notes (and a lot of hours of work) that had disappeared.

What version of Tomboy are you using?  0.12.0 and 0.12.1 had a known
sync bug that could cause notes to be deleted (they are always deleted
to ~/.tomboy/Backup, btw, so you can recover them).  I recommend you
use Tomboy 0.12.2 or 0.14.1.

> I was now trying to recover the notes by attempting to restore deleted
> contents in Dropbox via the web interface but when I try to sync with the
> Dropbox folder I continuously get a message that says "Server is locked. One
> of your other computers is currently synchronizing. Please wait 2 minutes
> and try again". But I have only one computer on. I have even disabled
> Dropbox. So, I don't know what the problem is.

If you are manually messing with the files in your "sync server"
folder, I think it would be easy to completely confuse sync.  Your
best bet right now is probably to get all the right notes on *one*
computer, clear your "sync server" folder, delete your ~/.tomboy on
your other computers, and start over.

> Besides helping me solve this problem, if there is anybody that has found a
> good system to synchronize notes between different computers, I would
> appreciate hearing from him/her. I work with three different computers and
> finding a good synchronization system is essential for me.

The inherent fragility of this sort of sync is the reason why I want
to focus a lot of effort on offering free online sync to our users.
Expect news about this in the coming weeks.

Until then, Mike Fletcher has written a NoteDirectoryWatcher add-in
that notices title and content (but not tag or other metadata) changes
in ~/.tomboy, and updates your notes automatically.  It might be
something that would work better in your situation.  On Monday I will
be releasing it as part of Tomboy 0.15.0, and also as a separate
download for Tomboy 0.14.x users.  Hopefully I'll have the metadata
stuff fixed so that it works well for all data changes.  I'm not sure
if you can tell Dropbox to sync your ~/.tomboy, or use symlinks or
something, but another upcoming changes will be the ability to use XDG
standards for storing note data, so it will be easier to keep your
notes in non-standard directories.

Using Dropbox with the existing file system sync backend *should*
normally work, as long as you wait a bit before syncing each computer,
so I'm not sure what initially caused your problems.  If it happens
again, please file a bug.

Hope this helps,
Sandy
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[Josep M. Fontana]

Thanks for your rapid response, Sandy.

Anyway,
Message: 6
> What version of Tomboy are you using?  0.12.0 and 0.12.1 had a known
> sync bug that could cause notes to be deleted (they are always deleted
> to ~/.tomboy/Backup, btw, so you can recover them).  I recommend you
> use Tomboy 0.12.2 or 0.14.1.
>  
I actually was using version 0.14.0. I'm surprised it is not the latest
version (0.14.1) since this is the Tomboy that came in a new
installation of Ubuntu 9.04. I would have thought that I would have
gotten the newest version when I ran the update manager, which I have
done a couple of times already.

I'm glad Tomboy makes backup copies of the notes automatically. I went
to  ~/.tomboy/Backup and I see a lot of notes there. So I assume the
ones that got deleted in the synchronization process will be there. What
I wonder now is if there is an easy way to restore the notes I want. I
had them organized in different notebooks so if I have to open them one
by one to figure out their contents and then archive them in a given
folder it might be a bit of a pain.

Of course, this is much better than loosing them altogether but I'd like
to know whether there is an easy way to recover the notes to their
previous state. I don't see any option in the menus so I really don't
know how to go about recovering them.

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[Sandy Armstrong]

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Josep M. Fontana
<josepm.fontana@...> wrote:

> Thanks for your rapid response, Sandy.
>
> Anyway,
> Message: 6
>>
>> What version of Tomboy are you using?  0.12.0 and 0.12.1 had a known
>> sync bug that could cause notes to be deleted (they are always deleted
>> to ~/.tomboy/Backup, btw, so you can recover them).  I recommend you
>> use Tomboy 0.12.2 or 0.14.1.
>>
>
> I actually was using version 0.14.0. I'm surprised it is not the latest
> version (0.14.1) since this is the Tomboy that came in a new installation of
> Ubuntu 9.04. I would have thought that I would have gotten the newest
> version when I ran the update manager, which I have done a couple of times
> already.

That's pretty standard, since 0.14.1 came out after Ubuntu had already
frozen for 9.04.  They won't accept a point release unless it has a
security fix, usually.  Maybe they'll accept the upcoming 0.14.2,
which has a fix for a crasher that's common in Ubuntu.

> I'm glad Tomboy makes backup copies of the notes automatically. I went to
>  ~/.tomboy/Backup and I see a lot of notes there. So I assume the ones that
> got deleted in the synchronization process will be there. What I wonder now
> is if there is an easy way to restore the notes I want. I had them organized
> in different notebooks so if I have to open them one by one to figure out
> their contents and then archive them in a given folder it might be a bit of
> a pain.

All notes go right in ~/.tomboy, there are not different folders for
different notebooks, so you don't have to worry about that.  Recommend
using grep to find the missing notes, then copying them back to
~/.tomboy.

> Of course, this is much better than loosing them altogether but I'd like to
> know whether there is an easy way to recover the notes to their previous
> state. I don't see any option in the menus so I really don't know how to go
> about recovering them.

No, we don't have a GUI for recovering deleted notes, though it has
been suggested and I think it's probably a good idea.

Sandy
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[Josep M. Fontana]

I'm happy to say I recovered from the little sync disaster. I figured
out how to restore the backup copies: just copying them back to the main
directory from the backup directory. I was confused because the Dropbox
directory I had set up for local synchronization has a different
structure with numbered subfolders. I thought the notes had to be
restored to the appropriate subfolder. Then I saw that there are no
subdirectories in the default Tomboy directory. So I copied the contents
from the Backup directory and everything is fine. Thanks a lot.

I have another question.

> Until then, Mike Fletcher has written a NoteDirectoryWatcher add-in
> that notices title and content (but not tag or other metadata) changes
> in ~/.tomboy, and updates your notes automatically.  It might be
> something that would work better in your situation.

Where can I get that? I went to the plugin section on the Tomboy wiki
and I didn't find this add-in. A Google search for NoteDirectoryWatcher
did not produce anything either.


Josep M.

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[Sandy Armstrong]

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Josep M. Fontana <josepm.fontana@...> wrote:
>> Until then, Mike Fletcher has written a NoteDirectoryWatcher add-in
>> that notices title and content (but not tag or other metadata) changes
>> in ~/.tomboy, and updates your notes automatically.  It might be
>> something that would work better in your situation.
>
> Where can I get that? I went to the plugin section on the Tomboy wiki and I
> didn't find this add-in. A Google search for NoteDirectoryWatcher did not
> produce anything either

Hmm, I must have forgotten to mention that we are releasing it on
Monday.  :-)  Mike posted a work-in-progress version to the list
recently, and there is a good version in git now that I fixed up
yesterday and seems to be working pretty well.  I need to test it in a
dropbox-like situation to make sure we're not forgetting anything.

It will be part of Tomboy 0.15.0, and will also be available as a
separate download for Tomboy 0.14.x users.

Sandy
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[GrowMap]

I thought some might want the non-geek version of how to restore accidentally deleted Tomboy Notes caused while trying to sync using Dropbox.

TO RESTORE ACCIDENTALLY DELETED TOMBOY NOTES:
Click on Places, Computer, Filesystem
Click View, Show Hidden Files
Click Home then click on YourUserorPCName

For Tomboy Notes find .Tomboy (in Home/YourUserorPCName)
Look in Backup folder - that is where deleted notes go
Click Edit, select all
Copy and paste all notes back into Tomboy folder

Restarting Tomboy Notes did not show the missing notes; I had to reboot my PC to get them back.