Disappearing file

Something very strange is happening: I have vault #1 which contains two text files and a password protected dmg file. Everything worked fine until today when I opened vault #1 and the dmg is no longer visible. Nothing has changed in this vault so it can’t have been deleted. If I look in /Volumes/XYZ I can only see the two text files.

I also have vault #2 which is backup of #1 and on Google Drive - this backup is months old as neither #1 or #2 has changed recently - they are essentially read only. I open vault #2 and the dmg isn’t visible either, this vault was last accessed in November last year.

This has to be a problem with Cryptomater/MacOS. I upgraded to the latest version and the problem still happens. At one point I did briefly see a third file in the mounted volume but it was too quick to make out before it disappeared. I wonder if Cryptomater is adding the dmg file then removing it immediately.

Welcome to the Cryptomator Community :slight_smile:

first thing to check is if the file still even exists. If the vault only contains three files in total, this is an easy task: Go to the vault storage location, navigate into the d directory and let the finder or terminal count all files over all subdirectories.

If it is clear that the file is still there, the next step is to check the log file for WARNings, ERRORs or Exceptions. To get a distinct and clean log file, restart Cryptomator, enable debug mode and unlock one of the vaults in question. Reveal the vault in finder, list all its content and quit Cryptomator afterwards.

Report back if you find anything in there.

There were only two files. Luckily, these files don’t change much so I was able to back up the dmg from earlier this year. There is definitely a bug here though - perhaps I left the dmg mounted when I relocked the vault or something. I only ever use this as read only so there is no way I could have deleted the dmg manually. I’ve moved the files out of the dmg to avoid this scenario happening again.

You might have misunderstood me: I wanted you to check if the encrypted dmg file still exists.

One needs to differentiate between the shown vault content when its unlocked and the stored encrypted data. If the file cannot be decrypted, it won’t appear in a normal file listing at the access location /mount point of your vault, but still exists at the actual storage location of your vault.

No, I did understand. From the terminal looking under d there was a dir then two encrypted files, which correlates to the two files I see in Finder.

Also, in the log, these two encrypted files correspond to the files visible in Finder from the mounted vault.

Once the vault is unlocked, it only takes calls from the OS made by some process, channel them through a cryptographic layer and execute them on the encrypted files.

Cryptomator does not delete files by itself, hence something else ordered to remove the file. Of course a second possibility is that due to bit rotting/ disk corrpution the hardware sector(s) of the dissappeared file were not readable anymore.

I don’t think that’s the case because he mentioned that the same file is also missing from Google Drive:

The question is: is vault #2 just vault #1 synchronized with Google Drive via Google Drive Sync app OR is it a second completely independent vault, to which the files were manually copied?