New master key is never discovered by other clients

Support
1

I’ve been using Joplin 1.0.170 on Windows and iOS 10.0.36 with E2EE with no problems for a while now. I made a small mistake in the beginning and had to “decode and re-encode” everything so they were sharing a total of 3 Master Keys with no issues.

They sync to NextCloud via WebDAV …/remote.php/webdav/Joplin

Recently I added a Linux client and added a new Master Key there. Now I’ve sync’d the Linux client, it gets all the other notes and the master keys from the other clients no problem. The problem is that the new E2EE master key from the Linux machine is sync’d “MasterKeys: 4/4” and I can see the key in the NextCloud folder, but both the iOS and the Windows clients claim it’s not there.

I’ve sync’d the Windows and iOS clients multiple times, they still show a sync status of complete but “MasterKeys: 3/3” and their sync debug report has no indication that the new 4th master key even exists.

Any recommended next steps?

This is the Windows client: can’t find the key

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This is the Ubuntu client: says it’s sync’d but it picked up a strangely early date (I made it a couple weeks ago, not in February):

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2

I’m having the same problem. I created the encryption in Linux, Windoze and iOS show all my notes as Encrypted. They are not picking up the key.

3

I would recommend to disable encryption, sync all devices and then to use the most powerful device to encrypt everything with one single key.

4

Thanks. I completely removed and re-installed Joplin. I deleted the folders from Dropbox, imported my notes without encryption, and synced all devices. It’s working properly now, but Windoze, which I rarely use, has a big ugly orange bar warning me about a password. I have not attempted to encrypt yet.

5

It appears this is still a problem. I enabled the encryption earlier today, about 12 hours ago. My iPhone has a new note showing as Encrypted. All the other notes remain unaltered and encryption is disabled. The Linux client shows encryption enabled. It’s obviously syncing because it received the new note.

6

I’m seeing a similar issue. I disabled encryption on the Linux client and sync’d. Then I went and sync’d the Windows and iOS clients. At this point they all discovered the 4th, missing Master Key. It shows the new master key with a really, really old “Created” date (February) even though I created it a couple weeks ago.

7

I found part of the problem. It’s not that the other clients do not receive the key. The Linux desktop client never sends the key… or it sends it ~24 hours later.

8

That’s not the issue I was having. The key was verified on the server, but never found by any of the other clients.

After disabling the encryption on the Linux client, then syncing again, the other two clients then discovered the master key from the Linux machine.

9

I still don’t have everything working. I did eventually get everything to sync, but apparently typo’d the password… DOH! So I had to start over yet again. This time I put the password in Bitwarden, which is where it belongs. Then I copy/pasted it into Joplin. I’m waiting for everything to sync to Dropbox.

10

FOUND and FIXED! The sync works perfectly now. The problem was a faulty DSL modem. The modem worked. We still had Internet, although it was just a little flakey at times, and required frequent reboots. I had CenturyLink out to test. They determined everything looked good to the modem. They replaced it, and it solved the problem. For folks coming from Evernote with 10-15 years and two thousand notes, encrypting them and copying to Dropbox pumps a ton of data through. If your Internet connection is less than pristine you can expect trouble. My suggestion would be to work on one notebook at a time.