When something's wrong
Devices don’t sync
Devices reach each other directly on the same network, over the internet where a router allows it, and otherwise through a relay. The Devices tab shows when each was last seen and where it was. If one hasn’t been seen for a while:
- Check that Iceblock is running there, and that the device is awake and online.
- On Android, Iceblock syncs in the background only every quarter of an hour or so, and less while the battery saver is on. Opening it syncs at once.
- On a VPN, syncing may go through the relay.
The sync button syncs now. On a phone or tablet, Files and a file’s comments have no sync button: pull them down instead. With a mouse connected, the button is there too.
Working offline
Work offline, in the Devices menu, or the tray icon’s menu on a computer, makes Iceblock connect to nothing until you turn it off. A strip along the top reminds you.
Saving the battery
With your phone’s battery saver on, or a laptop’s battery low and not charging, Iceblock syncs only when you ask. A strip along the top says so, and tapping it syncs now.
What Iceblock has been doing
The Activity page (the button at the top of the Devices tab) lists what Iceblock has done, as it does it: errors, warnings, and information about what’s going on, each marked in its colour. It shows warnings and errors at first. Filter shows the information too.
Diagnostics, on a computer
iceblock-diagnostic shows, in a terminal, what Iceblock is doing and is about to do, and where your files actually are. It runs beside the app, so you can watch it while you use Iceblock, and it can look at Iceblock while it’s stopped, without changing anything. On Ubuntu or Debian, with Iceblock’s package repository added (see Install Iceblock):
sudo apt install iceblock-diagnostic
iceblock-diagnostic
Press h in it for its keys. n syncs with every other device now, in the background: a spinner in the top right shows while a sync is under way, and the Sync tab shows each sync step by step as it happens. c copies the tab you’re on to the clipboard (on Sync, the chosen sync’s steps; on Data, Activity and Bandwidth, their main section; on the others, all of it), to paste into a message to us, and saves it too, in ~/.cache/iceblock/diagnostics/, as iceblock-diagnostic-<tab>-<date>-<time>.txt. Copying needs wl-clipboard (or xclip, on X11), which the package suggests: on a desktop, install it with sudo apt install wl-clipboard. Or use a terminal that lets programs copy; if neither’s there, it says so, and the file’s still saved.
w watches your network’s other devices from the one you’re on, as the title says: one device wherever it is, where n asks it to sync now, or two devices, where n asks one to sync with the other and the Sync tab shows both sides. l includes the devices on the watched device’s own local network too (not those over a VPN), or leaves them out. The Activity tab then shows all their logs as one, each line’s device beside it, and Overview lists them, with how far each one’s clock is from this one’s. Only devices of your own network with full access can see a device’s diagnostics, and where your files are stays on each device.
If Iceblock stops answering (a mount that hangs, a command that never comes back), the file serving in the device’s directory says what its serving loop was doing when it last changed what it was doing, and since when; and once anything has gone on for over five minutes, a warning saying so is in the Activity log.
Telling us
When something goes wrong or seems odd, please tell us at iceblock@temporary.nz. Copy a debug report, in the menu on the Activity page, copies what helps us see what happened, and nothing of your files, to paste into your message. Choose the redacted report to post it somewhere public: its IDs, names, addresses and paths are replaced by stand-ins that can’t be turned back, so it still shows what happened, and on which device, but not whose.