1.2.6: Continuous notification flood of "you modified (FILENAME)" for unchanged files

Bugs and issues Linux
#1

With versions 1.2.3 and 1.2.6 i am getting flooded with a constant stream of messages from insync: “You have modified (FILENAME)” for files i have not modified in hours, weeks, months, or years. It started doing this with 1.2.3 earlier today and is still doing it after updating to 1.2.6. For many files (unchanged since weeks) it is reporting updates repeatedly.

While writing this i have discovered how to reproduce it… kind of (not working reliably): open up any folder using the GDrive web client. Within a moment, Insync reports that any gdocs in that dir have been updated (which they most certainly have not been). This happens almost every time i visit a given gdrive folder using the official web client, often repeatedly for the same files (every few minutes) as long as the directory is opened in the web client. It is also reporting changes in some folders i have not opened (with any client) in weeks.

Platform: Linux Mint 17/x64. Insync package version 1.2.6.35101-trusty.

The error/action requires areas in the app are devoid of messages.

Update: it is currently repeating this every 3 minutes for all gdoc files in a specific folder:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-LwmfRxDIPveWdleVV5MldSNGs&usp=sharing

there is NO write activity going on in that folder, and none of the gdocs are opened anywhere (either in read nor write mode), but insync is repeating “you modified FILENAME” every few minutes.

#2

I will tagged @lpugoy our Linux engineer on this issue. He will get back to you soon.

Thank you for your patience. :smile:

#3

follow-up: it’s still doing it, but less often. This morning i had 19 “you modified…” notifications on my desktop, the last one from a couple hours ago. i have confirmed that none of the files being alerted for have been modified.

#4

Okay, even more disturbing: a new notification with “you removed (filename)” followed shortly after by “you added (filename)” for a file i have not modified since October 3rd, 2010(!!!).

This behaviour is downright frightening.

#5

More info: the flood has slowed but it just popped up a change notification for a file edited by a different person (who has edit access), but the kicker is that the change was made on February 22nd.

So my current theory is that Insync is sending me a backlog of notifications which have queued up for months on end. (That doesn’t account for the deleted/re-added file, however, which i have not touched in years.) It’s almost as if it’s re-playing the change history of every document, sending one notification per historical change.

#6

Update: the February file change for which i was notified yesterday arrived yet again a moment ago (file still hasn’t been modified since February, so this is a dupe). Every few hours a notification is arriving for docs which have not been modified but might have been viewed by someone. So it seems that possibly(???) insync is reporting file views as changes.

#7

@sgbeal We are aware of this issue and are still investigating the root cause. We use the file’s altered_at timestamp to check for changes, but it seems it can change even if the file is not modified. Apologies for the inconvenience.

#8

I’m seeing one or two notifications like this per day on Mac OS X Yosemite. I’ll get a “you removed file xxxx” notification, and then some time later another notification saying the same file has been added. This has been going on for several weeks.

Someone else is reporting the same issue on this thread: Insync occasionally removes and adds back a file. Is this a known bug or am I being hacked?