JoplinCloud Account Sharing corrupted beyond my repairs

Support
1

Operating system

Windows

Joplin version

2.13.14

Desktop version info

Joplin 2.13.14 (prod, darwin)

Client-ID: b00297098d6b4626ac5896772b2f99f4
Sync-Version: 3
Profil-Version: 44
Unterstützter Schlüsselbund: Nein

Revision: 174c5f4

Sync target

Joplin Cloud

Editor

Markdown Editor

What issue do you have?

(The above data is only a single device, there are many devices involved in this)

My wife and I have two JoplinCloud accounts, that are seemingly corrupted.

I started by setting up my notebooks and sync it to my account. That worked flawlessly between my Mac, my Windows and my iOS devices (although it's extremely slow in decrypting on iOS).

I then tried sharing a particular notebook with my wifes account. I synced her account on her Windows computer and that worked flawlessly as well. My shared notebook showed up in her Notebook list and she was able to edit the notes, which synced back to my devices.

First issue came up, when she installed Joplin on her Android device and synced to her account. Suddenly, she could not see my Notebook anymore - neither on her Windows machine, nor on her Android.

Several of my notes from the shared notebook got deleted on my end. I recovered them from a backup. The shared notebook still showed as being shared (yellow text), but when I looked at the sharing list, it was empty. I deleted all my notebooks, reimported from a backup and added my wife's account to the sharing list of the shared notebook again.

It synced up with all our devices and everything seemed like it's working. For a few days.

We then tried adding her account on a new laptop. We synced her account to the laptop. Now, this deleted a large amount of notes in the shared notebook - they all vanished from all devices.

I decided that I would try and wipe both of the JoplinCloud accounts, and start fresh. I disabled all sharing and used Victor to clear out both of our accounts - locally and on the server (or so I thought). I disabled Note history, and ran the tool. After that I synced it to our respective JoplinCloud accounts.

One weird thing I noticed at that time is that JoplinCloud still showed a lot of data in my account - even though everything was deleted. Even after some waiting time, a lot of data did remain on the quota of the account. For my wife's account this was not the case, the quota usage went to to a few kB.

(From here on, everything was done on my laptop and my iPhone, using different profiles for my wife and me, as I'm purely in troubleshooting mode)

I deleted all our local Joplin profiles and started fresh. I synced my (empty) profile to my JoplinCloud account - It downloaded roughly 2000 elements from the cloud, but nothing showed up. In the statistics page, nothing was shown either. I did the same for my wife's account - 3 objects where downloaded, presumably a few of the encryption keys.

So, I once again added my notes from a backup and uploaded them to the Cloud. It added to the existing storage usage, but otherwise worked fine. I was able to sync it to my iOS without problems.

Then, I added my wifes account to the shared notebook again. It prompted her to accept the invitation and then started downloading the right amount of objects. However, nothing showed up in her account.

In my account, a ton of notes are missing again and a few conflicts arose (that's something new!).

This has been a horrendous experience so far. I had hoped that it is possible for support to wipe clean these two accounts / generate two new ones and we try a fresh start. I assume that the database is borked with regards to one or both of these accounts.

2

Do you have a backup of your notes? If so you can do this:

  • Create a new profile
  • Do a full sync
  • Delete what you don't want to keep
  • Import the backup
  • Sync
3

Yes. I already did that. That's the problem. It's downloading stuff from your server that doesn't show up on my side. It remains on your database, there's nothing I can do from my side.

I've stated that I did this in the OP:

I synced my (empty) profile to my JoplinCloud account - It downloaded roughly 2000 elements from the cloud, but nothing showed up. In the statistics page, nothing was shown either. I did the same for my wife's account - 3 objects where downloaded, presumably a few of the encryption keys.

4

What would be the issue with these extra items? Just download them anyway and the system will take care of them if they are revisions or orphaned resources.

5

Laurent, please read my initial post. I do not care about extra items that may or may not download. I care about my notes getting deleted randomly, when I share them with someone.

6

Yes, what I suggest is to start fresh, sync everything, delete what you don't like, reimport a backup, and sync it again.

Then once you have a stable environment with all your notes and notebooks, please try again to share a notebook and let me know if there's any issue.

Also please download the latest version 2.13.15 since it includes a fix for Joplin Cloud (although it doesn't look like that was your problem):

7

Yes, what I suggest is to start fresh, sync everything, delete what you don't like, reimport a backup, and sync it again.

It looks like that was already tried:

Then, after re-sharing and syncing, this happened:

In my account, a ton of notes are missing again and a few conflicts arose (that's something new!).

[[Edit]]: This could (possibly?) be related to the mobile app lacking a "delete local data and re-download from sync target". (Based on this section of the Victor README).

8

Yes, there is an issue. I already did ALL OF THAT, prior to my original post. You'd know if you've read my detailled report of what I've already did.

Now that we're on the same page, where do we go from here? I already suggested that you reset my two accounts or provide two new accounts if the first suggestion is not feasible. I tried to get it to as blank as a state as I possibly can. I can not do anything more on my side.

9

Yes, to start from a new profile on mobile you'd need to delete and reinstall the app which maybe wasn't done, so the old sync state was still there applying changes and causing issues.

10

I don't know if it is relevant, but just to clarify: The deletion and conflicts arose from my wifes desktop accepting the share and syncing it - I did not make it as far as trying her account on a fresh mobile profile again.

The app was deleted and reinstalled on my iPhone. My wife's phone is not connected to the account anymore. I changed passwords prior to working on this, so no other devices besides the ones under my control work on the accounts.

11

Ok so... what's happening now? Are you gonna help me? Can I get a refund? Do you just take my money and do nothing?

12

We can only suggest to try again and restore from backup. Make sure you start from a new profile on desktop, and uninstall/reinstall the app on mobile to clear the profile.

Then as mentioned above, sync everything, delete what you don't want, and sync again. Then reimport your JEX file and sync again.

Once all your devices have the last data, share again and if you have any issue please let us know and provide any error message and log. Also make sure you install the latest version of the desktop app since some sharing-related bugs have been fixed.

For any question regarding our cancellation policy please see here: Joplin Cloud - Help

13

I did all of this. Reinstalled everything, cleared out every profile, delete everything in .config etc. I already told you.

And I did ALL OF THIS prior to even posting this in the first place. Are you kidding me? You tell me to do all the things, I did it, you say it again. It's now your turn to do something.

You happily took 60 bucks from me and provide only a fucked database and do not even put in even the slightest effort to help me.

14

We are happy to help if we can have a look at the log. Unfortunately it's not possible to know the details of what may have happened just from a description.

15

How about you got through the logs on your side?

I'm certainly not going through this mess a third time - besides: I can not even do that, even if I wanted. The test period for my wifes account ended. I'm sure you would be gladly take even MORE money from me and make me jump through hoops. But I'm not paying to reinstate that account, in the vain hope that it magically fixes itself by itself. No, this is definitively your turn. I paid you enough already.

16

That isn't quite how it works. Joplin sync targets only really see the result of what the client has done - Joplin is very much local data first unlike something like Evernote which is all on the server side.

So if there is a problem somewhere in either your data or the way the clients are working then that information is more than likely only in your local log files and not reflected on the server which might just see something like a blanket deletion sync.

17

I did check the logs in Joplin Cloud yesterday and didn't find any issue, which is why I was asking for a local log which would show what the application itself was doing. We do not collect telemetry data so we cannot know what detailed application actions were done that may have caused the issue.

If you do not want to do any further tests please send me a PM with the last 4 digits of your card and your name and address to verify your identify, and I will cancel and refund the subscription. Make sure you make a backup of any important data before that.

18

Thank you. I've sent you the data.
I've spun up a Joplin Server by now, it works as intended with the backups loaded into them - so it's not my dataset thats causing the issue.

19

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