Data lost when copying config from one workspace to another

This post was last updated for 301 days ago, and the information may already be changed

Hi,

I have two workspaces in SiYuan. I wanted to copy all the config from one workspace to another. I copied the "conf" folder from the first workspace folder to the second.

However, in the second workspace, all the notebooks from the first one appeared. I deleted them manually. Then, when checking the first workspace, all the notebooks were gone from it as well.

There was some important data in those notebooks, and I have no idea how to restore them. I assumed the workspace folders are completely independent one from another, so why does something so simple as copying all the config also copy all the data, and synchronizes that data between the folders?

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    • akmtk
      VIP Warrior Author

      Update: I was able to restore the data via Main Menu / Data History, there select Snapshots, rollback to the previous snapshot.

      BUT, now cloud sync doesn't work! Whenever I sync, it gives me back the state with the deleted data. How do I force the cloud to make the rolled back state as the current, most recent?

    • akmtk
      VIP Warrior Author

      In the end, I had to manually remove the cloud folder I used for sync, create it again, and then sync the snapshot data back to that folder.

      The problems are:

      1. When creating a new workspace, all your settings from the previous workspace are not getting copied there. So you don't want to re-configure them manually, so you copy the config folder from one workspace to another, at the assumption that it only contains config. But in reality, the data is also transferred.
      2. When working with data history, when rolling-back to a previous snapshot, there is no way to tell the cloud that this, in fact, is the most recent, correct data state, and prevent it from overwriting the data on sync.

      There is even a message popping up when rolling-back:

      Screenshot20240206at10.07.261.png

      I would very much like to have an option to overwrite the cloud instead of disabling the cloud entirely. I mean, what's the point of rollback if you can't stay on it?

      Edit:

      Screenshot20240206at10.43.44.png

      I believe these settings in /conf/conf.json contributed to the problem. I assumed the workspace folders are self-contained, that is, all the references are relative and under no circumstances one workspace can be affected by what I do with another workspace. I had a mental model of an ordinary file being open by a program to edit. E.g. if I edit a Word file with MS Word, I do not expect anything else but that file to be affected by my edits.

      2 Operate
      akmtk updated this reply at 2024-02-06 17:50:56
      akmtk updated this reply at 2024-02-06 17:40:45
    • 88250

      The configuration file contains cloud sync directory information, so if two workspaces use the same configuration file, they are equivalent to being connected to the same cloud directory, so they will affect each other through data synchronization.

      1 Reply
    • akmtk
      VIP Warrior Author

      Are there any plans then to make it possible to copy the config (as in, the settings you set from the user interface, e.g. use Adaptive Width) from one workspace to another?

      I'd like to isolate personal files from work files, but I would like to share the settings between the two workspaces. Ideally, it would be good to have the settings configurable per-app, not per-workspace.

      Edit: just splitting the user-facing config and system config in two separate files, and documenting it somewhere, would already be a great solution!

      1 Reply
    • 88250

      There are currently no plans to support the import and export of configuration files. For now, you can consider manually copying and modifying the content before pasting.

      For example, if you do not need synchronization settings (including data repo), you need to delete the "sync" and "repo" fields in the configuration file.

      1 Reply
    • akmtk
      VIP Warrior Author

      Ok, I see. How about the ability to roll back to a snapshot and sync it back to the cloud, as I was writing in my post above? Currently, the only way to do so is to remove the entire cloud folder, which also erases all the history, which is suboptimal.

      1 Reply
    • zxhd86 1

      You can first disable synchronization, manually roll back the snapshot and then change the sync mode to "Full manual sync". Click on Sync in your settings menu again but this time choose "Upload local data snapshot" as a direction for synchronizing.

      After that, change back to automatic syncing.

    • 88250

      Please refer to @zxhd86 's solution above, which is to use "Full manual sync" to upload.

      image.png

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