Gvfs not very stable in Ubuntu 16.04, affects Cryptomator

Just a note to anybody using Cryptomator with Linux. At least with 16.04 LTS, gvfs is a bit unstable. So the nice way Cryptomator mounts your vault via DAV and gvfs means a few things:

  1. Sometimes the application accessing the gvfs volume (/run/user/1002/gvfs/blah) will hang hard. No ctrl-C or Ctrl-\ will save you. The workaround is to kill -9 the application (or xkill it) lock and re-unlock the vault.

  2. Since there are a variety of File dialogs on Linux, some applications will not be able to see the nice gvfs mount.

Unfortunately I have to confirm this (using 64-bit Linux Mint 18.2 MATE, which is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) and looks like this prevents me of using Cryptomator at all as I am using Linux as my main system. In my case I tried to use VLC with Cryptomator and result was fatal - only reboot helped… Tried even newer kernel 4.12.11-041211-generic (64-bit) and this did not help either. This is unacceptable that in the middle of working just everything hangs and in my case I could not get no access until rebooted the computer. Cryptomator just said that one instance is running and it will exit:

[main] INFO org.cryptomator.launcher.Cryptomator - Starting Cryptomator 1.3.1 on Linux 4.12.11-041211-generic (amd64)
[main] WARN org.cryptomator.launcher.InterProcessCommunicator - System property cryptomator.ipcPortPath not set.
[main] DEBUG org.cryptomator.launcher.InterProcessCommunicator - Connecting to running process on TCP port 43667...
[main] INFO org.cryptomator.launcher.Cryptomator - Found running application instance. Shutting down.

But I could not have any access anymore through file manager or command-line. There were numerous different processes running by cryptomator and reboot was the fastest way to get system back.

Since rebooting Linux is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I think I’ve found that killing the gvfsd works. This frees up the various things waiting on IO and then it respawns itself.

This is good but is not a solution (more like a workaround) as all opened files will lose the connection and data loss may occur - there is never known when gvfs freeze occur and unsaved data will be lost. Also files are needed to reopen and over dav:// it is not so comfortable (fast) either.

Yes, of course, just like rebooting. I was hopping on the workaround bandwagon.

Cryptomator devs? Solution?

In the meantime we’ve released the first beta of Cryptomator 1.4.0, which comes with FUSE support. Have you tried this yet?

Can you post a direct link to make it easy for readers of this thread?

Sure: You can download 1.4.0-beta1 for Linux as an AppImage from here.

Just make the AppImage executable and run it. No further dependencies needed.