Windows Client Sync Problems

📱 Desktop & mobile clients 💻 Desktop
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1

Hello everyone,
I have been installing Nextcloud for a week, firstly on my Raspberry Pi 4, now on my Debian Server. Unfortunately I have the following problems with the synchronization of the Windows client.
Test Environments:

  • NextcloudPi 1.50.5 (NC 24.05)
  • NextcloudPi 1.50.5 (NC 24.0.8)
  • Nextcloud 25.0.2
  • Laptop Windows 10 Home 22H2
  • PC Windows 10 Pro 22H2
  • Nextcloud Windows Client 3.6.4
  1. Sync error:
  • I create a file “Test.txt” on the PC → status becomes green tick
  • I am changing the content of the file → File is being synced, status green tick
  • I’m freeing up the file’s local storage → Status remains pending on sync
  • I open the file on the laptop → content fits
  • I’m freeing up local storage space on the laptop for the file → status remains Pending synchronization
  • I change the content of the file on the PC → status remains pending synchronization, but file content changes in the Webinterface
  • The date of the file also changes on the laptop, however the content of the file does not change! Not even if you force to make the content available locally…
  1. File Timestamp problem
    If you move a file back and forth between the server and Windows, both the creation date and the modification date are preserved.
    However, if you open the file via the virtual file system and save it, both the creation date and the modification date are updated!

The creation date should remain in my opinion.

I tested both cases on Micrsoft OneDrive. Everything works there as expected fine.

Can someone please check this? I suspect the problem is the Windows client.

I tested with the server versions mentioned above.

I will now test on Windows 11. Unfortunately, Nextloud cannot be used for me as productive system until now.

Many greetings and thank you in advance.

2

For the client there is a troubleshooting section in the documentation:
https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/3.6/troubleshooting.html

So you can check the functioning of your Nextcloud and for the errors, you can check the logfiles for more details. So you can perhaps see why the changes remain pending…

3

Thank you for your reply.
In the meantime I have also tested it under Windows 11 and with all versions of the client from 3.5.4 until 3.6.4 on different PCs and with different server versions.
You can easily check that.

  • Create a .txt file
  • Wait for it to sync
  • As long as the file is empty, you can remove it via free up disk space and make it available again locally. However, if you write something to the file, it no longer works. The status in Windows Explorer then always remains “Pending synchronization”, although the file has been synchronized according to the Nextcloud Client and has also been changed in the web interface.
    It looks like this only affects .txt and .md files…
4

Interesting. I tried with a textfile and could reproduce the problem.

If I delete the text again from the textfile and save the empty textfile, I can free the space again.

I just found a few topics on github:

https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/4383

I didn’t go through all the topics, you can check which suits you the best and add your finding with the empty file, that might be an interesting hint to find the issue.