Remoter Forums

The last time I was using my computer, it crashed, and so I shut it off. The next time I booted up, when I opened Remoter all of my sessions were gone. All I see is the swirly arrow and the text "Click here to add your first session". It looks like everything was reset to the defaults. I don't see any of the categories that I created either.

Please tell me that the sessions are saved somewhere and that I don't have to manually add all 20+ sessions back in. I am on 1.2.0.

Sorry, maclemming.
The sessions are not saved anywhere other than your system.
They are saved in a file called: sessions.plist

You can try doing a search on your system, maybe it's there somewhere?
Any Time Machine or Cloud Sync Manager backups?

Raf.

What directory should the sessions.plist be in?

You should find it here: ~/Library/Application Support/Remoter/sessions.plist

For the future I'd recommend using the CloudSync feature that saves your current sessions.plist to DropBox.

That's what I thought, but there was no directory named Remoter in Application Support when I looked for it this morning. As soon as I created one new session, then the directory was created, so somehow that entire directory was deleted.

Oh well, guess I have to re-create them all.

I am rather leery about using Cloud Sync, as I do not like to have configuration files saved in the "cloud". I do use Dropbox for some things, but I use client-side encryption before putting anything on there.

Agreed, I'd love to see other synchronization options, too. In case I understood Raf right they'll be coming in the future.

I'm not sure but I think that if you require a password to access Remoter this automatically encrypts the sessions.plist and thus wouldn't allow a third person to use the file with his own Remoter. Besides, you cannot read the passwords out of the sessions.plist with a standard editor as they are already encrypted - though this wouldn't hinder to use the file in Remoter. @raf: Is that true?

Well. You can always back up the sessions.plist manually.
But yes, the passwords are encrypted inside the plist file. All other info is not encrypted though. So keep it safe. Remoter's password is not kept in this file.
For the retail version of Remoter for Mac, the sessions.plist is found in the directory Alex mentioned. (~/Library/Application Support/Remoter/sessions.plist)
For the App store version, because of sandboxing, all of Remoter files go here:
~/Library/Containers/com.remoterlabs.remotermac
So the sessions file would be here:
~/Library/Containers/com.remoterlabs.remotermac/Data/Library/Application Support/Remoter/sessions.plist

And, yes, iCloud support is coming for CloudSync manager. Not sure that would have helped you, unless you trust Apple more than Dropbox.

Raf.

Interesting, it looks like I have found a bug then.

I am using the AppStore version. When I look in ~/Library/Containers/com.remoterlabs.remotermac/Data/Library/Application Support/Remoter I do see the sesisons.plist, as well as all of the screenshots, but, for some reason when I start up Remoter (not RemoterBeta) It is picking up the files in ~/Library/Application Support/Remoter instead.

I did have both Remoter and RemoterBeta in the /Applications directory but I always ran the Remoter application. I have deleted the RemoterBeta app, and still the released Remoter is still looking in the wrong directory for the sessions file. How do I get it to look in the proper directory?

maclemming,
You're most likely still using either a beta, or the non-app store version of Remoter, if it's looking in ~/Library/Application\ Support
(Or an older version of the App Store version of Remoter).
Since, even if I wanted to, there is no longer a way to have apps access the ~/Library/Application\ Support directory. Sandboxing is handled by the OS, and is semi-transparent to the app. The app thinks it's accessing ~/Library/Application\ Support, but the OS actually delivers the
~/Library/Containers/com.remoterlabs.remotermac/Data/Library/Application Support/ instead.

The only time the app can access the ~/Library/Application\ Support directory is during first-time run (meaning the Containers/... directory doesn't exist yet.) In this case only, Remoter will (via a scripted action handled by the OS, not Remoter) transfer all files of any previous installations (from ~/Library/Application\ Support/Remoter over to the new location).

If you're positive you're running the latest App store version of Remoter, and it's still looking under ~/Library/Application\ Support, then I'm at a loss. Something is going on with your machine maybe? Try rebooting. This really shouldn't happen, as it's a security flaw.

PS: I take it you didn't lose your sessions.plist file after all? yay?

Well, it appears that even though the directory did exist in ~/Library/App Support, Remoter was not actually using it. I deleted that directory, and it still only has the 4 sessions that I added yesterday. I viewed the sessions.plist in a hex editor and I could see the 4 sessions that I created, but I did not see any of the ones that were there before, so they really are gone. The really strange thing is that only the plist file was corrupt/deleted. All of the screenshots from the many other sessions are still in the directory.

Time to write a backup script.