[sync-services-developers] Sync Services deleting all data unexpectedly.

[Brian M. Criscuolo]

Martin,

I've seen it in slow sync mode a few times. If the entire data set  
isn't pushed into the truth whatever is missing is flagged as a  
delete. I've quickly deleted entire groups of calendars in iCal that  
way - along with all the events!

I've heard the anecdotal reports as well. Here's one from a customer  
of ours. I'm sure that we're involved in some way, but this isn't  
something that I can reproduce:

"I decided to try a little more testing (nothing better to do on a  
sunny Saturday afternoon apparently). On the handheld I created a  
fake contact and did a (contacts only) sync. I was initially happy  
because the fake contact was in my Address Book on the Mac! Yikes, I  
then noticed that most (but not all) of the groups that I had created  
(weeks ago on the Mac) were GONE from Address Book. So I reverted to  
the Address Book database that I had saved this morning before using  
5.0.2. Sure enough, they were still there. So I synced again,  
assuming that the contact that had been added to the Palm would once  
again be added to the Address Book and I'd watch and see what  
happened to my groups. The groups were fine this time (what the heck  
is going on?) but the contact on the Palm was not added to Addy Book.  
Hmmm, so I checked the Palm, it wasn't there anymore either. OK...So  
I created the Fake Contact on the Palm again and synced again. Now  
the groups are still there in the Addy Book and so is the Fake  
Contact. So I deleted the Fake Contact on the Mac and synced again.  
Now it's gone on the Mac and on the Palm and my groups seem OK. So  
everything is now OK....right? I wish I knew."

I'll try to pay more attention to things like this and maybe we can  
work out a pattern.

b

On Nov 20, 2005, at 6:04 AM, Martin Redington wrote:

> Has anyone else seen Sync Services delete all their data unexpectedly?
>
> I've had three user reports of this now - the symptoms seem to be that
> one machine suddenly decides that it doesn't need its data any more,
> and then propagates the deletes via sync services to other sync
> clients, but I'm still collecting more detailed diagnostics to send to
> Apple.
>
> I've heard some anecdotal reports of data loss when people moved to
> Tiger, but these were all end-user reports IIRC.
>
> I always sync in default (fast sync) mode, so its hard to see how all
> of the data could get trashed ...
>
>    cheers,
>            Martin
>
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********************
Brian M. Criscuolo
Senior Software Engineer
Mark/Space, Inc.
bcriscuolo at markspace.com
<http://www.markspace.com>