OneDrive on demand causes cryptomator to freeze

Help Desktop App
1

Hello Michael,

Cryptomator desktop needs the vault files local available. If your storage provider does not support „files on demand“, then you can try cyberduck instead of cryptomator. Cyberduck does connect directly to your online vault. See here: How do I use Cryptomator without local sync?

I am using Cryptomator (with Fuse-T) on OneDrive which has a files on demand option.
I was facing several issues with Cryptomator causing my device (M1 Pro MBP) to nearly freeze due to loading the requested file, when I attempted to open a file that is only available online. Even when the OneDrive client was running and online it didn’t trigger the download and neither did it say “can’t open file”. It just ended up loading endlessly and causing all Apps to freeze that are trying interact with cryptomator.

The only way out was to force quit cryptomator via activity monitor.

Is there any option to resolve this? At the moment I am keeping the whole vault force synced via OneDrive since then no issues.

Thank you in advance
BR Zybot

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2

Hi. I created a new topic because it’s a new issue.
Unfortunately I do not use a Mac and cannot help here.
Maybe someone else can.

Nevertheless, a look in the log file might show some hints to the cause of this.
Please check if there are WARN or ERROR Message and if so post them here (mask all personal related content)

3

Hi Michael,

I will see if can reproduce it with a new vault (since I don’t want to jeopardize the data integrity of my
actual vault) within the next days and write back.

BR

4

Hi,

You can try using a program called Rclone to mount the Onedrive account to a folder, and then have Cryptomator access the vault via that method.

Rclone software will ask for the files as needed.

Rclone is an open source utility for mounting cloud drives on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

I don’t personally have a Mac, so I can’t test it this way for you, but I use it on Windows and Linux in the same fashion and it works.

Rclone will run in a terminal window.

I am familiar with the use of the software in case you have any configuration questions.

Rclone can be combined with Cryptomator to access vaults on many cloud providers.

5

Hi LeoW,
thank you for the idea. You mean using Rclone instead of the OnDrive App for syncing the encrypted vault data between the server and the device?

I have used/tested Rclone in the past when Boxcryptor closed its gates also using its crypt module as an alternative to Boxcryptor but the crypt module has limits regarding the path length of its encrypted data. So in the end I decided to use Cryptomator.

It never came to my mind using it for syncing without crypt and using Cryptomator on top. I will give it try also.

Thank you

BR

6

Here is a real world example from my world.

I have a Chromebook and Chrome OS is a variation of Linux and Chromebooks can optionally install Debian Linux and run all kinds of Linux software which I do.

I mount my Microsoft OneDrive on my Chromebook this way and I’m suggesting that you use the software not for synchronization purposes necessarily but for starters just to mount the remote file system.

/home/leo/OneDrive is where my entire OneDrive file system is and cryptomator has a subdirectory there with a vault. Mind you it’s only there when rclone is running.

I have very high speed download on my internet at 800 MB so when I open a file it comes down pretty quickly.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that you have to synchronize the entire vault from OneDrive down to your computer that’s optional.

I don’t access very large files so when I need to open a document cryptomator send the request to rclone and rclone gets the file.

You can try it both ways.

7

Facing the same problem, did you happen to find the root cause or maybe a possible workaround?

8

Hi,

I think the root cause was the way Cryptomator/Fuse demands the data from the onedrive demon I actually just went the easy way and kept the whole vault locally synced. My experiences with the rclone sync and mount was not very reliable and I saw a lot of cases where the mount was ejected randomly with an error.

So work around ⇒ kind of
Solution ⇒ no

9

Hi, this issue is preventing every mac users on the planet to use OneDrive on macOS with cryptomator.

It has been there for a while and it looks like no one has decided this should be fixed.

The workaround is "download all onedrive files and stop using file on-demand. The problem with this is OneDrive is 1TB, very few macs have 1TB SSDs so it cannot be a workaround for everyone.

10

I wouldn’t say it so drastically, since there are ways to use it.

For example you can split your vaults so, you have important data separated into small data and bigger data. And keep the vault wit the smaller data synced. But this may not be feasible for everyone.

Also it is possible to use CyberDuck or Mountain Duck as a sync client to use files on demand it has the Cryptomator engine included and can also decrypt vaults.

But overall, I would also like to see this issue fixed. I came to Cryptomator back in 2022 when Boxcryptor closed their doors. BC was also using MacFuse as it can be used with Crypromator. With BC it was possible to use Smart Sync in OneDrive. So it should be possible to fix, I guess.

In the end Cryptomator is a free Software, hard to complain about details, when it is free.

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