Can't see contents of decrypted folder from remote Mac

[tatami]

I use Espionage to protect a folder on my iMac. I have the same on my MacBook. In the past I've decrypted both folders to synchronise them by copying new documents over from the one to the other. This involves (typically) logging in to my MacBook (over my local network) from my iMac, navigating to the unencrypted folder and then dragging and dropping the relevant documents.

However when I tried to do that yesterday (and I tried multiple times in both directions), while I could see the unencrypted folder from the remote Mac, the folder appeared to be empty (on the local Mac it was full of documents). Please could you help me resolve this issue so I can synchronise the two Macs.

I'm using the most recent versions of Espionage and Sierra.

[zsolt]

Hello, I just tested it and I do not even see the protected/mountpoint folder itself.
Did you upgrade one of the Macs to Sierra recently? Considering Sierra has problems with protected folders on external disk I would not be surprised that the same applies to the network shares.

I remember that we were testing a while ago Espionage handling protected folders on remote network shares and that it worked to some extent but not reliably.

By "decrypting" folders on both Mac, I suppose you mean "unlocking" the protected folder, correct?

If you have dropbox, or if you use iCloud drive (although I prefer the dropbox) you could synchronise automatically, would you be interested in that as a solution?

Rgds
Zsolt

[tatami]

Zsolt, thank you for getting back to me on this. No, I haven't upgraded either Mac to Sierra recently. I upgraded both soon after Sierra was released. Since then I've just been doing point updates as they're released.

By decrypting I do indeed mean unlocking the protected folders.

I'm afraid that synchronising via the cloud is not an option I want to pursue. The information in the Espionage folders is sensitive and I don't want to put it on anyone else's servers. Is there another workaround?

Best wishes

Philip

[zsolt]

The information put into the cloud is just an encrypted disk image, the data cannot be read in any way on the cloud server.

Give me the exact versions of the OS X on the two clients you use, and some folder structure example, so that I can try to reproduce it as you see it.

Rgds
Zsolt

[tatami]

Thanks, Zsolt. Both machines are running macOS 10.12.3.

On the iMac, the encrypted folder is called photography and the folder structure looks like this: /Users/philip/photography

On the MacBook, the encrypted folder is called archive and the folder structure looks like this: /Users/philip/archive

Does that give you the information you need?

Best wishes

Philip

[zsolt]

 Which folder is shared in that structure?  How do you connect,  as registered user or as guest

[tatami]

So the two folders I want to copy between are photography and archive. In the Finder I can see the contents of photography on my iMac. In the Finder, I can see the contents of archive on my MacBook. But if I log in to my MacBook Air from my iMac, I can see the folder photography but it appears to be empty. I'm logging into my MacBook as myself, i.e. registered user/owner not as guest. Thanks.

[zsolt]

Hello Philip,

I could not make it work reliably.
As you might know already, Espionage works by storing the data into encrypted disk images.
After you added the folder to Espionage we move the data from the folder into encypted disk image and leave the original folder empty.
When you unlock the folder, we "mount" or attach, the content of the disk image to the folder you protected, and to you it looks as if the folder contains data, but it does not, you are just looking at the content of the disk image "through" the (empty) folder.
So this mount, or attach is happening locally on your mac.

Now, when you connect to a shared folder from another mac, this mount happens too, in this case you are "mounting" the remote mac folder onto your local mac to see the content.

Now, if you would like to look at the content of an unlocked folder on a remote mac, this means you are expecting to see the content of a disk image mounted on a remote mac, through a folder which is mounted on your local mac....does not look very reliable and promising.

So let's try to do something else.

Let's connect to the folder on the remote mac which contains the espionage disk images, and then you can import them to your local Espionage installation.

####
All disk images of Espionage are by default located in the following folder

yourhomefolder/Library/Application Support/com.taoeffect.Espionage3/Data

to reach that folder, hold down the option key and select Library from the Finder's Go menu.
Once inside Library, you can navigate the other folder normally.
Make  the folder com.taoeffect.Espionage3 on your MacBook shared
Now you should be able to connect to that folder from your iMac.
If it worked so far, let me know and I will tell you how to import the disk image from the MacBook into Espionage installation on the iMac.
Then, whenever you need to sync the folders, you simply unlock the Photography folder and your Archive folder, both on your iMac and copy the content between them.

Let me know your comments,

Zsolt

[tatami]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, Zsolt, I've been busy on other things. I've followed your instructions and even before I made the folder com.taoeffect.Espionage3 on my MacBook shared, I was able to navigate to it from my iMac.

I'm hoping that I won't have to duplicate it on my iMac because it's very large – over 500MB.

I'll wait to hear back from you and thanks again for your help here.

Philip

PS I'm still mystified about why a few months ago I could see the contents of the mounted encrypted MacBook disk when I logged in from my iMac but now I can't. What's changed?

[zsolt]

Hello Philip,

Yes, this folder sharing on Mac is in general a bit clumsy and this is why I do not want to rely on it.
The thing is that if you login as user which is present on that mac, then you have access to all folders which that user can see locally no matter they are shared or not. And considering this is not a server-client setup but instead just a regular user machine, just two of them, then it is normal that you will have the credentials to log on as an existing user, and then yes, you will see the Library folder too.

But there is nothing to duplicate, you directly import the disk image from the MacBook into Espionage, so Espionage will be reading the remote disk image.

To import it, do the following:

on the macbook unlock Espionage
click onto small "i" near the folder name you want to import
using the disk image drop down menu, note the name of the disk image
click copy password button
save this password into some text file you will be able to access from iMac
go to iMac,
create one empty folder you will use to read the content of the protected folder form MacBook, any name will be ok, it can be in any path, but I suggest to place it inside user folder.
unlock espionage
open the MacBook's ...taoeffect..../Data folder
drag the correct disk image onto espionage window (on iMac)
Espionage will ask you for a password
paste the one you saved in the text file
now it will ask you for a mountpoint folder
point it to the folder you created in previous step
now you should be able to unlock the folder locally on the iMac

MAKE SURE you lock the folder, before you break the network connection between the iMac and MacBook
if the network connection is not up, if you try to unlock the folder it will simply report that the disk image is missing, no harm done

let me know how it went

Zsolt

[tatami]

Zsolt

It went brilliantly! Thank you for your clear, detailed and helpful instructions. Problem solved and I'm a very happy customer.

Best wishes

Philip

[zsolt]

And you made one support tech happy too :-)

In case of any further questions or troubles,

Let me know
Zsolt