Joplin deleted all entries

Support
1

I just freshly installed Joplin 1.0.127 (prod, linux). Next I imported data from another application.

In the general settings I had set

Synchronisation Interval - Disabled
Synchronisation target - Filesystem
Directory to synchronise with (absolute path) - was blank

At some point, in two phases most of about 400 entries were deleted. I never touched the Synchronize button.

Suspecting sync as a problem, configured a file location and hit “synchronize” - the remainder of the entries were deleted.

Imported lots again. Hit sync, that worked.

Now I added a new entry, that was instantly synced, despite “Synchronisation Interval - Disabled”

By now I am a bit weary about keeping my data.

Questions:

  1. Why does it sync at all if I disabled sync? Intention? Bug? I suspect that sync was the reason I lost my first imports.

  2. If I have a brand new installation, do my first entries, how to then set up a sync to a folder? By necessity that folder is empty and newer than any note, Sync would delete all again.

Thanks for feedback and suggestions.
Martin

2

/ref https://joplin.cozic.net/faq/#all-my-notes-got-deleted-after-changing-the-webdav-url-

All my notes got deleted after changing the WebDAV URL!

When changing the WebDAV URL, make sure that the new location has the same exact content as the old location (i.e. copy all the Joplin data over to the new location). Otherwise, if there’s nothing on the new location, Joplin is going to think that you have deleted all your data and will proceed to delete it locally too. So to change the WebDAV URL, please follow these steps:

  1. Make a backup of your Joplin data in case something goes wrong. Export to a JEX archive for example.
  2. Synchronise one last time all your data from a Joplin client (for example, from the desktop client)
  3. Close the Joplin client.
  4. On your WebDAV service, copy all the Joplin files from the old location to the new one. Make sure to also copy the .resource directory as it contains your images and other attachments.
  5. Once it’s done, open Joplin again and change the WebDAV URL.
  6. Synchronise to verify that everything is working.
  7. Do step 5 and 6 for all the other Joplin clients you need to sync.
3

Thanks for that hint Helmut. Actually I had read that before.

Here the point is, this is a brand new installation. There was no remote
data at all, this was not a change of remote location, but a first
setup. Furthermore I am not using WebDAV, just a directory on an NFS
mounted share.

Though I could have made a backup before connecting to a remote share, I
never expected my data to get deleted. Particularly since sync was
disabled. This is what gets me.

4

In that case, I can only think of the NFS mount to be stale. Joplin thinks the notes are gone and deletes them.
I remember something similar was mentioned a while back.

I believe @laurent is working on a mechanism to warn the user if many or all notes are set to be deleted.

5

Thanks again.

Of course, an option. Though I doubt it. That share is permanently in
use as 99% of my data and work is reached through that NFS mount. There
are always some files open on that share. Joplin is just another tiny bit.

But, my gripe is that ...

a) Joplin tries to sync despite sync being disabled. Mind you, by now,
after the initial setup that works constantly and well! But,... the
setting is set to disabled. In that sense no network problems at all for
Joplin. Else not anyway. This sync apparently took place without a
folder being specified yet. Not at once, but in 3 steps.

b) there are no clear instructions for the initial setup of a remote
folder after some data has been added.

I hope to have clarified a bit :slight_smile:

Martin

6

I think there are some topics about nfs here or on GitHub. As I understand in case of network error, nfs mounts an empty dir, Joplin sync with this empty data, and delete its local data too.

7

Thanks for the hint. I can well imagine that in case of an nfs failure /dev/null is used…

Searching for nfs here in the joplin forum only finds this thread.

However… My situation differs in that way, there was no directory at all given in Joplin. In that sense Joplin had no information of a target - whether it is local or remote.

The string for the target in Joplin certainly was empty. That should not be used as a target. So again we are looking at Joplin, not nfs.

Also I still maintain, Joplin should not sync when “Synchronisation interval” is disabled. It still happily syncs e.g. when I start it or after creating a new note. It certainly should not be doing that if there is no valid target. I would argue it should not sync at all, only if I manually start it, but that is discussable