Investigating "Some items cannot be synchronised."

Support
1

Operating system

macOS

Joplin version

3.2.13

Desktop version info

Joplin 3.2.13 (prod, darwin)

Client ID: fba6c7f92ec0447c8f5948b0a057f3e9
Sync Version: 3
Profile Version: 47
Keychain Supported: Yes

Revision: a898e17

Backup: 1.4.2
Freehand Drawing: 2.16.0

Sync target

File system

What issue do you have?

I know that there are similar posts out there, but 1) they didn't help me resolve my problem and 2) I'm providing additional information here that may help others who are investigating this.
This is the second of 2 joint posts, the other one is on my profile - I can't link it here due to forum limitations. It's called: Investigating “Got metadata for path but could not fetch content”

---- Important context info ----

  • I selected macOS above because that's where I'm writing from, but I also had a copy installed on a Windows 10 machine (3.2.13, just uninstalled it trying to fix this issue)
  • I selected Sync target = File system because I do point Joplin to a folder on the computer - although it's a cloud folder that belongs to the app Sync, which is similar to Dropbox et al.
  • I have backups of the files from both systems before I tried to fix this issue with no luck.
  • Error Message Details +

  1. Attachments
    Not downloaded: 0
    Downloading: 0
    Downloaded and decrypted: 1427
    Downloaded and encrypted: 0
    Created locally: 49
    Error: 102

  2. Sync status (synced items / total items)
    Note: 1876/1876
    Folder: 414/434
    Resource: 1441/1578
    Tag: 8/8
    NoteTag: 7/7
    Revision: 243/312
    Total: 3989/4215

Conflicted: 0
To delete: 0

---- On to the investigation ---
This concerns several attachments.

I picked a random one to investigate, this one :
b4ab2dbc24128969f8eff52e28246713 (8af48b1e93c14092b105abacb9462510): Resource not found: 8af48b1e93c14092b105abacb9462510

From now on I'll refer to these as "b4" and "8a".

  • Searching for "b4" and "8a" in the internal Joplin search found nothing.
  • Searching for "b4" in the filesystem returns file "8a".md.
  • Searching for "8a" in the filesystem returns 2 results:
    -- #1: "8a".md. It's only metadata, except for one string of text : "b4" (without the .md extension).
    -- #2: 9b3af0fd25f44c9280f9731164b6ec0c.md, from now on known as "9b". It's found both in the filesystem and the joplin internal search - and it is the same file (I made a small change in Joplin and verified that it updated the file in the filesystem).
    What's notable is that there are a lot of missing images. Searching for "8a" in the markdown view reveals that this is one of the missing images - the code is :
    ![icon](:/8af48b1e93c14092b105abacb9462510)

Summarizing:

  1. "9b" is the actual file for the Joplin note. It wants an image, and has a reference to a resource called "8a" - which has a .md extension.
  2. File "8a" is empty except for the fact it contains the string "b4". Some sort of shortcut / symlink?
  3. "b4" is the real attachment?
  4. "b4" (which I'll assume based on the above is an image) was not synchronized to this machine, hence the error message. I searched for it on the entire machine, not just the cloud folder - which means it's not in the /.config/joplin-desktop/resources folder either.
  5. I think the format of the error message is: resource (markdown_file): Resource not found: markdown_file. This is messing with my head because I would expect the error message to name the resource, not the markdown file that points to it, at the end of the error message.
    • So, questions for people who know more than me: + +
  1. Is file "8a" a symlink? Why is is there?
  2. Is my understanding of the structure of the error message correct?
  3. Where could the attachments / resources gone and what can I do to search for them? Could they have been renamed? Could there be a chain of symlinks?

Thank you,
Stilt

Joint screenshots
Joint screenshots538×1200 123 KB

2

Update: I found an old backup, where file 8a did not have the ".md" extension, but ".configjoplindesktopt".

I opened it and saw that instead of the content given above, it has .svg content. I changed the extension to ".svg", and sure enough I was able to open it with a vector app and see that it is indeed the missing icon.

But now I'm not sure how to restore it. I tried copying and pasting it into the following folders but it still didn't "load" it into the note in questions:

  • .config folder on desktop
  • cloud folder, both with ".configjoplindesktopt" and ".md" extensions.

Would anybody be able to help me understand :

  1. where Joplin stores which resources (I only have some in the .config folder and others in the Resources folder in the cloud folder I sync between machines)
  2. How to restore this resource
  3. Why are svg files given the .configjoplindesktopt extension and how I should treat them?

Thank you.