[Owncloud] Fwd: How I just lost 2/3 of my files to the sync-client

[Klaas Freitag]

On 05.02.2014 14:20, Benjamin Schieder wrote:
> Hello there.
>
> The subject is intentionally scary but it's equally important, at least
> I think so.
> I just lost about 2/3 of my files to the sync client version 1.5.0
> running on Debian connected to an owncloud instance version 5.0.13 also
> running on Debian. I'm writing this here down to warn others of this
> particular caveat.
>
> I have a fairly big owncloud files directory. Around 20 GB spread over
> thousands of files.
> I used to have a clientsync/ directory that was synced between three
> computers.
> After a reinstallation of my laptop and re-configuration of the sync
> client, the client now synced the / directory of my server instead of
> the /clientsync directory.
Did you have a previously configured client? Have you been asked if you 
want to start over with a clean sync or keep the local files?

> Well, that was fine with me, so I decided to move the directories from
> /clientsync/* to / .
Where? On the server or on the client?

> The sync client then started working on that and the logfile showed lots
> of "Moved" messages. All fine so far.
Which logfile? Was it the apache log or the client log?

> At some point, the sync client encountered a 500 Internal server error
> and stopped working.
Why did that happen? Did you find something in the apache error log?

> During investigation, the sync client crashed and I restarted it.
> Now it started to sync again but started deleting files on the server
> and locally.
> In the end, only the files successfully "Moved" were kept, all others
> that existed on the server but not on the client or vice-versa were
> deleted.
That is strange, and we do not have an explanation to that. Maybe you 
have more input on our questions.

> Personally, I'd call that a serious bug but am unsure how I can and if I
> want to reproduce it.
>
> I was able to restore the files from another machines sync directory,
> but it was very scary nonetheless.
Yes, sorry for that.

Klaas