Sync Suddenly Broken

If such VPN products exist, they’re probably enterprise grade, I suppose. The usual VPN (aka IPSec) does nothing but establish a tunnel between to endpoints and encrypts all the traffic between them. It has no idea of anything behind any of the endpoints.

In what ways did Bonjour fail you? Or was remote sync’ing a requirement for you?

it would often not sync. i set it up with dropbox and bonjour in the hope that it would be faster but background sync is basically never working automatically and foreground sync quite often wouldn’t sync either (maybe might have not found the imac from the phone; all devices use the only wifi connection i have though).
besides, you are right, remote syncing became a requirement since i would forget to open the ios devices too often before leaving.
edit: hilariously, just now bonjour stopped working again. my iphone is simply not seeing any updates for the last 15 minutes via bonjour

I suspect you could do it with Logmein Hamachi - it can handle Enterprise accounts but is also free for networks up to 5 computers

https://www.vpn.net/

I can add my vote that after 1-2 years of hassle with Dropbox failing to sync my databases, I switched to CloudMe and . . . it just works. Based on my experience,I wouldn’t bother with Dropbox for DevonThink.
(I am in the US).

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As far as I understood their online documentation, it is just a VPN. You’d need another tool on top like Pro from the same company.

Logmein Pro is similar to Microsoft Remote Desktop or other screen-sharing programs; that would not do what I am thinking.

Logmein Hamachi VPN (their basic offering) lets you set up a shared folder. I am suggesting that if you put a “local” sync store in such a shared network folder then perhaps you could do sync that way. (I have used Logmein Hamachi but have not yet tried it with Devonthink so this is just an idea - not something I have confirmed as working with DT3.)

See:

https://support.logmeininc.com/pro/help/how-do-i-share-files-and-or-folders-over-logmein-hamachi

Thanks for the link. It’s as in thought: the sharing is not part of the VPN itself, they just tell you how to set up file sharing over it.
But this might be worth trying. If one is able to limit the sharing to the VPN connection.

Sadly, you can count me among the new Cloudme customers too as of 14 days ago. After another three databases across two syncstores on Dropbox stopped syncing for the 3rd or 4th time this year, I had enough. I’m now paying for both (resentfully!) and if Cloudme proves as resilient as reported here, I might just drop Dropbox entirely (unless, hopefully, the issue will be resolved for DT3!). I’ll keep my eyes peeled for happy updates to this problem.

Browsing this thread again after my sync stopped, without any error messages etc. (this time via Dropbox -last time round, I switched from iCloud to Dropbox). I obviously want to avoid complete reinstallations :slight_smile:

cloudme has been by far the most stable sync for DT. it has performed flawlessly so far, updates are being delivered to the devices within seconds and for the last 3 months there has been 0 hiccups unlike the endless fresh installations of dropbox.

I solved my problem (sync between Mac and iOS devices stuck) by moving from Dropbox to iCloud for sync. A few months earlier, I solved the same problem by moving in the other direction. One solution to these problems seems to be a switch or new setup of the sync store/location. Of course, this this requires a subscription to two services and also takes a few hours to realise on all devices. Not really satisfactory and I hope it will be a few months longer before this is necessary again :slight_smile:

To be honest, the sync is currently the weakest part of DT imho. I understand that some of these problems are not DTs fault, but offering sync stores that dont work doesnt seem a wise move, regardless of who is to blame.

Of the current offerings:

  • iCloud – Slow as molasses, and sometimes doesnt work on iOS devices.
  • CloudMe – Apparently works according to reports, but not an option for me as some of my content should not be stored outside the US.
  • Dropbox – Silently stops working with no warning and no visible errors.
  • WebDAV – No experience, but who wants to setup a WebDAV server?
  • Local SyncStore – Super-fast, but requires extra manual steps on iOS, needs a master store on a Mac, and can only sync while on LAN.

Frankly, I’d prefer DT to offer a single reliable service rather than 5 that kinda-sorta work.

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I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. iOS cannot access a local sync store.

Frankly, I’d prefer DT to offer a single reliable service rather than 5 that kinda-sorta work.

There is no bulletproof solution to syncing, though Bonjour on a local network is a fast, reliable, and private option. Do some searching on the Internet and you’ll find plenty of people with complaints about iCloud, Dropbox, CloudMe, and many other cloud services, people complaining in general, not relative to DEVONthink. It’s impossible for anyone to overcome all the variables involved, from equipment to environment, all the time.

I’ve said it many times before: If you don’t really need a remote sync solution, it’s best to not use one. If there is an actual need for one, then it comes with some inherent potential weaknesses.

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What’s the problem there? You can even find a detailed description in the tips subforum here. And there’s no law that forces you to set up a WebDAV server, there are IP providers out there who do that. E.g. German Telekom is offering 25 GByte storage to their customers with a WebDAV access.

Last time i looked, DT is neither offering iCloud (that’s Apple) nor Dropbox (that’s Dropbox’ service) nor WebDAV or CloudMe. What they do offer, is an interface for these services, It’s not their responsibility if iCloud is slow, Dropbox unreliable and you don’t like WebDAV.
And I, for one, would not want to be forced to use a certain service just because a software provider is to lazy to provide choices.

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Hi. I am really not an expert, just an ordinary user. I use Dropbox and have all my main apps (including MS Office) editing files on Dropbox and similar with iCloud I use lots of apps that sync via iCloud continuously. Slowly many apps, have gone that way and I enjoy the convenience of using the iPhone and iPad to work on documents, together with the Mac. All these things have worked (for me) really well and I am surprised that working with Word, Powerpoint, Keynote and Pages is syncing automatically and smoothly in the background. So, my non-expert experience with cloud synching is actually quite good. Remote synching is something I got used to and maybe I fell into a trap there but with Apple my impression is that cloud sync is becoming the new normal.

PS: Having switched from Dropbox to iCloud for my DT syncing, it seems quite slow … but I can judge this only from the duration that the upload message can be seen at the bottom.

Just a short note: iCloud is known to work asynchronously and at its own speed. Which means that files in an iCloud location on machine A will be accessible on machine B at a time of Apple’s choosing.
If it looks like iCloud synchronization works perfectly for Pages, Numbers and other Apple software, it might well be that they use mechanisms not available to other programs (like non-documented APIs). Or that you’re simply lucky.
I have seen all kinds of delays with iCloud synchronization, so I’m not too fond of that. anymore. BTW, my Photos app on the Mac is still unable to upload a number of files to iCloud. And this is an Apple product …

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You are right, with photos one can test how fast it is. A photo on the iphone is often not immediately available on the Mac. Surprising how well it works for word processing … for me, … so far :slight_smile:

Document size might be an issue here. As in the case of DT’s databases.

You can even see how unreliable it is :frowning:

By “local sync store” I meant Bonjour local network sync between a Mac running DT and an iOS device running DTTG.

While I agree there is no perfect cloud sync service, I’m concerned about some of the failure modes. In the case of Dropbox, for example, everything appears to be working but DT simply stops syncing any data. For iOS using local network sync, swiping down from the database list (the sync trigger) does nothing at all.