ChronoSync Releases Release notes detailing bugs, changes and enhancements.

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CHANGES :

• Implemented the “No Bootables” readiness test that checks if you’re trying to make a
  12.3 (or later) bootable backup on an Apple Silicon machine. If so, it will generate an
  error and not let you proceed.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant will not present any source volumes that have a
  signed OS installed on them if running on Apple Silicon and macOS 12.3 or later.
• The ‘ShouldBeBootable’ readiness warning, that is triggered when the user has
  chosen a System volume as their source target but not a Bootable operation, is now
  considered an error if CS is running on Catalina or later.
• The active-boot-volume-to-file-server readiness warning only evaluates if we are
  directly accessing a local file system for our source.
• When changing the sync operation from non-bootable to bootable, we now force the
  re-selection of targets. This avoids several loopholes that existed whereby the sync
  task would not be properly constructed if the user chose targets before changing the
  operation to bootable.
• Now more accurately determines the mount point for a ‘System’ volume in an APFS
  volume group, even if it has multiple mount points due to pending software updates.
• Error messages generated by the post-synchronizer (responsible for making
  destination volume bootable) will now be included in notification emails.
• Enhanced the logic that determines if a bootable system is installed on a volume.
• Filename case changes are now factored into bootable backups.
• Added more diagnostics when comparing volume specifiers.
• The Analyze panel now provides better feedback when one of the targets is
  attempting to mount a volume.
• The Folder-to-Disk-Image Assistant now defaults to APFS when configuring the disk
  image on Mojave and later.
• Added checks to make preserving folder timestamps within a package more reliable
  on filesystems that are unreliable in this regard e.g. some SMB file servers and
  ExFAT volumes.
• Significantly reworked the sequence in which a target attempts to mount volumes.
• Employed new volume ejection/dismount strategies.
• Employed new Spotlight disabling strategies.
• Enhanced some diagnostics when copying or moving files.
• Fixed various cosmetic issues in the user interface.
• Added periods to some tooltips that were missing them.
• Updated online help.

BUG FIXES:

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Updated the list of AWS S3 endpoint regions.
• Added a warning to the Bootable Backup Assistant that explains why macOS Big Sur volumes aren’t listed as sources and directs users to our tech-note on how to create a macOS Big Sur bootable backup.
• Worked around a macOS Big Sur behavior that made it difficult to identify a targeted APFS volume group after an OS update.
• Worked around a macOS Big Sur bug that was causing exceptions to be thrown when running scheduled sync tasks on some systems.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed some bugs with the Resolve Alias feature that was introduced by macOS Big Sur changes.
• Corrected a recently introduced auto-layout bug in the Archive Handling options panel.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Cells in the Schedule Editor Advanced Interval panel used for selecting day-hour-minute ranges are now highlighted using the current system Accent Color.
• If the sync task document is unnamed, the Sync Task Document Name toolbar item will display “Unknown” instead of being blank.
• Modified various target selection dialogs so that the file selector dialog is able to fully dismiss before the selection is processed.
• Added logic to deal with the possibility that the Task documents folder does not exist, in which case it will revert to the “~/Library/Application Support/ChronoSync/Tasks” folder when naming/creating new tasks.
• Implemented a new Data Volume-Only Mismatched macOS Readiness Warning. This prevents Data Volume-Only backups on macOS 11, Big Sur, if the source and destination OS versions are different.
• When selecting a target that represents the root folder of the Data volume of an APFS volume group, and running on macOS 11, Big Sur, the target will now be forced to refer to the Data volume instead of the System volume group. This allows Data Volume-only backups on macOS 11, Big Sur.
• The Create Bootable Backup Readiness Test will now prevent a bootable backup from occurring if macOS 11, Big Sur, is installed on the source target volume.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug that could result in forcing the synchronization of all multiply-hard-linked files on the initial run of a synchronizer.
• Fixed several problems identifying System volumes on macOS 11, Big Sur.
• Fixed numerous cosmetic glitches on macOS 11, Big Sur.
• Fixed a bug whereby opening the Document Organizer or Scheduled Tasks Manager window from the TouchBar would not prevent ChronoSync from automatically terminating if it was launched for a scheduled synchronization.
• Fixed a bug in the Multiple Folder Backup Assistant, to prevent folders in the common “/Volumes” parent folder from being combined into a single sync task.
• Fixed a typo whereby “quickly” was displayed as “quicky” in various controls and tooltips.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Archive Panel outline view would not be scrollable after refreshing on app activation.
• Fixed a bug whereby, on an initial sync, if the data size trigger was in effect, it could result in an older file replacing a younger one.
• Fixed a bug whereby counting files in a branch would not skip excluded items. This is used by the validator and could lead to an erratic progress bar and scan count.
• Fixed bug that could result in an erratic Validator progress bar mostly noticeable on macOS 11, Big Sur.
• Fixed a bug whereby some of the predefined rules had the word “Template” in their name.
• Fixed a bug in identifying that macOS 11, Big Sur, is installed on a mounted volume.
• Fixed a bug whereby push notifications could not be configured if the Mac system name contained an ampersand character.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Ignore Ownership Readiness Test would not immediately update its status after responding to the ‘fix’ command.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Modified Bootable Backup sync task behavior to account for macOS 10.15.5 not allowing creation of valid firmlinks. On macOS 10.15.6+ ChronoSync provides the ‘Fix’ Readiness option to configure the required valid APFS Volume Group. On macOS 10.15.5 systems, the backup volume must be erased using the Bootable Backup Setup Assistant to create the required APFS Volume Group for Bootable Backup.
• Altered the logic so that sub-second timestamps have to differ by 2ms or more for a file-pair to be considered different when comparing package file contents.
• Added the ability to detect if a connected ChronoAgent implements the firmlink creation to allow Remote Bootable Backup on ChronoAgent connections.
• Added logic to allow instantiating sync task documents in-memory if for some reason the underlying macOS system doesn’t allow document creation read from storage/disk.
• The Google Cloud connection profile type is no longer available to users UNLESS an existing Google Cloud connection profile is defined. In this case, the user is able to edit and create Google Cloud profiles, but they won’t work due to API changes on Google’s side.
• The Bootable Backup Readiness Test now generates an error if the source target of a bootable backup resides on a macOS 11 (aka Big Sur) or later system.
• Added the ability to specify a custom location for mounting APFS snapshot volumes via the ‘Snapshot_Mount_Folder’ plist setting on macOS 10.15 or newer.
• Snapshot mount points now use 0755 permissions.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant does not present source volumes with Big Sur (or later) installed on them as potential sources for a Bootable backup operation.
• Applied fall back logic to all error conditions that occur when attempting to obtain attributes for an item.
• Improved recognition of the active System component of the boot APFS volume group and its Data counterpart.
• Increased the priority of the Bootable Backup Readiness test so that it is evaluated before many other readiness errors and reported to the user before other terminal conditions.
• If a bootable backup operation encounters an error when running the UpdatePreboot tool, the entire output generated by UpdatePreboot is dumped to the ChronoSync-console.log.
• Snapshot mount points are now created by the ChronoSync process instead of ChronoAgentLocal on macOS 10.15 or newer.
• Determining if volumes are mounted is now done in a more Big Sur compatible way.
• Modified the console messages produced when post-processing a bootable backup to provide a clearer idea of what is happening when diagnosing problems.
• Changed the package aggregation algorithm to improve bulk file and folder attribute collection.
• Added the ability to collect diagnostic messages when invoking the Restore operation.
• Modified the Validator date compare to take into account date value rounding that can occur.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby deleting a task document from the Organizer window would not delete any scheduled items that are referencing that task document.
• Fixed a bug whereby interpreting millisecond timestamps attached to files on APFS filesystems was subject to a scaling error when converting between time representations. This could result in unnecessary file data copying.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Volume Group Converter would raise exceptions and fail to completely convert a single volume to a volume group if the user just previously retargeted their destination and opted to preserve sync history.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Volume Group Converter wouldn’t work correctly in some right-to-left scenarios.
• Fixed an error handling bug when collecting attributes to force a rescan of the directory contents instead of causing an immediate fatal error.
• Fixed a bug when collecting attributes for directory contents and identifying items that should remain invisible to apps and be ignored.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a sync task document window is open, and the completion summary sheet is displayed, scheduled synchronizations for that sync task will fail because the summary sheet does not get auto-dismissed.
• Fix for a cosmetic problem displaying checkboxes in the Trial Sync Selector on Big Sur.
• Fixed a bug regarding priority of Readiness Tests when working from a saved sync task document.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Implemented work-around for failing bootable backups on macOS 10.15.5 (Catalina). See tech note: https://www.econtechnologies.com/chronosync/TN-CS-Bootable-10-15-5-Catalina.html
• When instantiating new sync and container tasks from their default template file, we now catch any exception that is raised.
• Hardened all logic involved with reading result data back from any shell task to better deals with situations that could cause indefinite hangs.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby an exception that occurs while Blessing the destination after a bootable backup would cause the application to terminate.
• Fixed a bug in the AWS S3 Connections whereby if the user’s account was restrictive to the point that they weren’t allowed to list buckets, the connection ‘Test’ would fail and not allow the user to manually specify a bucket name in the next panel.
• Fixed a bug whereby attempts to mount the volume that a target disk image resided on were likely to fail on Mojave (and later) systems.

• Improved reliability and compatibility when mounting disk images.
• Completely reworked the OAuth code to conform to the latest authentication requirements from Google. This includes a custom landing web page presented upon success.
• Changed the interval at which each connection profile’s connection status is retested if a connection profile is deemed to be ‘available.’
• Added logic to the Background Scheduler that checks to see if any other instance of the Background Scheduler is running and terminates duplicate instances.
• A target connecting to an AFP File Server will now use Carbon-based APIs for accessing the target by default.
• Improved error logging when testing the availability of AWS S3 servers.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby the Catalina APFS Volume Group Readiness Test would not reliably present the “Fix” option.
• Modified how ChronoSync communicates with the hdiutil tool to combat a possible hang.
• Eliminated the attempt to unmount a volume for connections that do not support volume mounting.
• Fixed the long-standing “Synchronizer deallocated with task views in place” bug that was related to Task Containers that were trying to adjust a non-existent progress sheet.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• None.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a problem that would cause files moved to a synchronizer’s archive to become locked.
• Fixed a bug whereby Archive Maintenance was failing to remove old archive files on a Catalina bootable backup.
• Fixed a bug whereby the user could not delete files in a Catalina bootable backup archive using the Archive Panel.
• Fixed a bug whereby the user could not restore files from a Catalina bootable backup archive using the Archive Panel.
• Fixed a bug whereby deleting a file from the archive during the maintenance phase of synchronization would fail if the folder containing that file in the archive was locked.
• Fixed a bug whereby creating a folder in the archive during a synchronization would fail if the parent for that folder was locked.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Implemented the ability to ‘force mirror’ empty folders as part of the bootable blacklisting. Applied this logic for saved application state folders & preference files.
• Implemented the FireWire Bootable Device readiness test that will flag a warning if attempting to create a bootable backup of a Catalina (or later) system onto a FireWire device because Catalina does not support booting from FireWire devices.
• Implemented the Archive Performance readiness test that will flag a warning if archiving is enabled on a target that does not offer an efficient move/rename capability.The warning suggests performance may be poor and offers to ‘Fix’ the problem by disabling archiving. Currently this is only triggered by cloud-based targets.
• Implemented the Safe-Copy Performance readiness test that will flag a warning if safe-copy is enabled on a target that does not offer an efficient move/rename capability. The warning suggests performance may be poor and offers to ‘Fix’ the problem by disabling safe-copy. Currently this is only triggered by cloud-based targets.
• Modernized routines and implemented additional logic when attempting to move files to the trash so that any restrictive ACLs are temporarily removed from the files to ensure success. This eliminates a potential problem when moving files to the trash without admin access.
• Modernized file lock/unlock routines.
• Implemented the ‘SFTP_SkipShellProbe’ public plist property which will indicate that SFTP connections should skip the test for shell support and assume that shell operations are unsupported.
• Implemented the ‘SFTP_ReconnectDelay’ public plist property which will indicate a pause (in seconds) that should be introduced between a failed probe for shell support and a reconnection without shell support.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a regression bug whereby Terabyte-sized numbers would be formatted as if they were Gigabyte-sized.
• Fixed a bug in the Backblaze storage provider whereby if a single large-file transfer took more than 24 hours to complete, the authorization token for that transfer was allowed to expire resulting in a failed file transfer.
• Fixed a bug whereby the APFS Compound Volume readiness test was always allowing the ‘Fix’ option when the destination volume was HFS+ formatted, regardless of the operating system running on the destination volume Mac. Thus older OS’s connected via ChronoAgent would present ‘Fix,’ which would allow the APFS Volume Converter to be invoked and was certain to fail if the destination OS was not Catalina or later.
• Fixed a bug whereby a set of bootable backup operations was still being unnecessarily performed on non-Catalina systems.
• Fixed a bug whereby determining the version of the OS installed on a bootable target was destined to fail if the target was connected via a ChronoAgent connection.
• Fixed some bugs to generate more meaningful error messages when converting volumes to APFS Volume Group format for Catalina Bootable Backup.
• Fixed a bug whereby a logic error in the ‘Archive Deletions Not Supported’ readiness test that could have caused a crash.
• Fixed a bug whereby, with a certain combination of task settings, the Analysis Report would fail to print the last page of the report.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Validator to hang while validating a large sync set that contained package files.
• Fixed a bug when determining if a volume is mounted whereby it was assumed that calling diskutil with the “-plist” argument would return results in plist format. This is not the case when connected to a ChronoAgent running on an old (pre 10.5 era) OS and triggered an exception.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• The APFS Volume Group Converter utility is now capable of converting an HFS+ formatted volume to an APFS Volume Group.
• If a download is in progress for an in-app-update when the application is quit by the user, the termination will be aborted and the download progress panel window will be brought to the front.
• The Configured System Identifier readiness test can now be ignored to allow the sync task to be run on different systems without the warning preventing it from running.
• Improved the Trial Key Retriever reliability on macOS 10.15, Catalina (or later).
• Improved shell task execution reliability to better handle errors and exceptions.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a problem whereby if “Launch at login” was enabled and so was “Use background scheduler,” the Background Scheduler could conceivably be launched twice at login.
• Fixed a long-standing bug whereby the results of running external commands and tasks could be misinterpreted because of failing to read the entire output/result from running that command affecting operations such as mounting Disk Images or Blessing bootable backup targets.
• If running on macOS Catalina (or later), the Background Scheduler uses the UUID of the corresponding ‘Data’ volume to prevent a situation whereby an OS update causes a change in the UUID of the System volume.
• If running on macOS Catalina (or later), the configured system identifier stored in Task Documents is derived from the UUID of the corresponding ‘Data’ volume to prevent a situation whereby an OS update causes a change in the UUID of the System volume.
• Fixed a problem whereby a change to the System volume’s UUID caused by an OS update could trick the mount detection logic for a given target to fail, forcing the user to re-select the target.
• Fixed a bug whereby selecting a pre- or post- sync script could cause the application to crash.
• Fixed a consistency problem whereby kilobyte file sizes and transfer rates were displayed with the K symbol instead of KB.
• Fixed a bug whereby a file-folder pair (i.e. folder on one side, file on the other, both with the same name) marked for synchronization would not display a status icon in both the Analyze panel or the Trial Sync Selector sheet window.
• Fixed a bug whereby a file-folder pair (i.e. folder on one side, file on the other, both with the same name) was likely to generate a folder enumeration error when running a Trial Sync (the error was benign if the user just ignored it).
• Fixed a bug whereby auditing differences in a file-pair would not factor the file size in some circumstances resulting in the File/Folder Information in the Analyze panel failing to display a file size difference in red.
• Fixed a problem whereby some some displayed file attributes in the Analyze panel would remain in cache after file entries were reloaded.
• Fixed several bugs in the Synchronizer, Bootable Backup Assistant and APFS Volume Group Converter whereby errors and/or incorrect behavior would result if there was an existing APFS Preboot volume on the destination but it wasn’t spelled exactly ‘Preboot’ e.g. ‘PreBoot’.
• Fixed a Catalina-specific bug whereby file system observers would fail to detect deep file system changes if the root folder being modified resided on your boot system’s ‘Data’ volume causing live triggered syncs not to run after deep file system changes were made.
• Fixed a bug in our custom target selector whereby rapidly selecting folders before their contents were displayed could conceivably cause a crash.
• Fixed a bug in our custom target selector whereby rapidly selecting folders could result in unnecessary fetches of folder contents and extraneous re-display of folder contents.
• Fixed a bug in the APFS Volume Group Converter utility whereby it was assumed that the destination volume had ownership enabled but that isn’t necessarily the case.
• Fixed a bug whereby a copy task could be initiated with a user abort pending and the copy would have to fully complete before the abort was recognized.
• Fixed a bug in the Backblaze B2 storage provider whereby move/rename operations on files larger than 5 GB would always fail.
• Fixed a bug in the Backblaze B2 storage provider whereby move/rename operations on files that result in a timeout would get caught in a timeout loop until the move/rename operation succeeded.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Added support for Archiving over Backblaze B2 connections.
• Added support for identifying and managing APFS Volume Groups.
• Added support for properly handling firmlinks in Bootable Backup.
• Added support for APFS Volume Groups to the Bootable Backup Assistant.
• Added the Compound Volume Group readiness check to ensure that a destination volume is constructed properly for Catalina bootable backups.
• Implemented the all-new Volume Group Converter utility that allows a single APFS volume to be converted to an APFS Volume Group on macOS Catalina. This utility activates when the user attempts to ‘fix’ the readiness warning.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant now presents the option of creating a sibling APFS volume. To get this option, you must select an existing APFS volume as your destination. When presented with formatting/erase options for that volume, you’ll now have the option to create a sibling volume. This will create an all new volume in the same container as the destination volume you selected.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant now enforces unique volume names when naming your destination volume (either after choosing to erase it or to create a sibling volume).The restriction is such that you cannot choose a name that already exists in your destination APFS container, unless you are erasing an existing volume and keeping the same name. Note that duplicate volume names are allowed, just not in the same APFS container.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant now makes sure that Preboot and Recovery volumes are dereferenced when deleting or erasing existing APFS volumes.
• The Bootable Backup Assistant now creates a bootable sync task that has Aggressive Smart Scan enabled on the destination.
• The Bootable Backup assistant will now append “Not recommended” to the “Proceed as-is” formatting option if a) the source and destination are APFS volumes AND b) they have mismatched crypto users as a crypto user mismatch is likely to produce errors from the UpdatePreboot utility.
• Implemented logic whereby sync task targets configured on pre-Catalina systems will automatically update the VolumeSpecifier object (if necessary) after being opened for the first time after a Catalina upgrade.
• Now attempts to suspend Spotlight operation on Admin Access Volumes.
• Improved volume detection and mounting efficiency.
• Modified Full Disk Access detection logic for macOS 10.15 (Catalina).
• Converted to using bookmark objects instead of alias objects to track the location of various files and folders. This affects the location of:
  • The main ‘Tasks’ (aka ‘Sync Documents’) folder.
  • Any sync task ever opened by ChronoSync and tracked in the Organizer.
  • A scheduled item’s reference to the sync task that is scheduled.
  • A container sync task’s reference to all contained sync tasks.
  • A sync (and container sync) task’s reference to pre- and -post- sync scripts.
  • Any File Comparison Helper’s reference to the helper application.
• Improved the Readiness Manager efficiency by caching commonly used sync task properties when evaluating all readiness tests.
• The Resolve Alias and Freeze Filesystem readiness warning is no longer generated if the target file manager is not running with root privileges because a snapshot will not be taken unless you’re running with root privileges.
• The ‘Aggressive’ SmartScan mode now functions as it was originally intended by
  turning off self-audits. Previously, all this setting did was reduce the frequency of self-audits.
• All assistants that create uni-directional sync tasks with SmartScan enabled will now enable Aggressive Mode on the destination target.
• The Delete Action UI presented from Analyze when manually deleting files now displays the “Deletion is permanent” warning using the OS’s secondary label color instead of disabled text color.
• If the application is instructed to terminate due to a system shutdown or restart, and there are currently scheduled syncs running, the warning dialog that tells the user about the running sync will auto-dismiss after 10 seconds. If this happens, the app will behave as if the user instructed the dialog to abort all syncs and terminate. If the user interacts with the dialog within the 10 second window, system shutdown/restart can be cancelled.
• On application termination, will now shut down any active Bonjour service listeners before quitting.
• Retrieval of a graphic resource when displaying an update notice is now performed asynchronously in a background thread to avoid the potential of a rather long block before the update notice was displayed.
• When selecting a target, a new VolumeSpecifier object is now always created even if the new target resides on the same volume as the previous target to prevent potential problems whereby not all properties of the volume are collected, and some of those properties may have changed since the target was last specified.
• Optimized the mount detection logic for non-local volumes for ChronoAgent-connected targets for which we have valid device information and a device GUID.
• SmartScan query reset log messages will now indicate the name of the volume where the reset occurred.
• File system freezing log messages now indicate the volume name which contains the frozen filesystem.
• Disabled self-validation when creating alias objects.
• The “/Cores” folder is no longer part of the bootable backup blacklist.
• The “/Volumes” folder has been added to the auto-exclusion blacklist.
• Eliminated the use of deprecated APIs when attempting to move items to the trash.
• Copying and/or deleting dylib files in the /Users domain will no longer trigger the execution of update_dyld_shared_cache at the end of a bootable backup synchronization.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug in the False Mount Point Detection Readiness Test that could lead to erroneous false-mount-point warnings when the real problem was that the target was not connected.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby validating the root level of a volume could introduce an error and premature termination of the validation process.
• Fixed a bug in the SFTP storage provider whereby it was assumed that an SFTP server would always provide a list of valid authentication methods which could cause a crash.
• Fixed a bug whereby if the user had selected a file-pair in Analyze and the program was in the midst of fetching file information as a result, and the user then switched back to Setup and selected a different file manager, the program could crash when trying to display the results of the file information fetch that was still pending.
• Fixed a bug whereby attempting to create the parent path of a nested item which had no parent that could result in unexpectedly synchronizing all files or creating a new destination folder outside of the sync tree.
• Fixed a bug whereby entering a blank value in the “Max retry attempts” field (when scheduling tasks) would raise an exception.
• Fixed a bug whereby when executing external tasks, an overflow of the error stream’s pipe buffer would cause a long stall and slow execution of the task. This was most evident when running update_dyld_shared_cache during the “Optimizing” phase of a bootable backup. A stall would occur if that task generated a lot of error output.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Resource Fork Unsupported Readiness Test would generate a warning even if the sync task had ‘preserve resource forks’ set to NO.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Full Disk Access Readiness Test could erroneously report that full disk access was required on the right target, if it needed testing.
• Fixed a bug whereby the partition scheme readiness test would sometimes be performed when a target volume was not mounted, resulting in an erroneous warning about the partition scheme.
• Fixed a bug whereby the VolumeSpecifier might not perform its final, ‘forced’ attempt to unmount a volume if the standard efforts to unmount the volume failed.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Bootable Backup Assistant would indicate that an HFS+ filesystem must be selected even though there were APFS options presented.
• Fixed some bugs in the archive management logic whereby assumptions were being made about the location of the sync task archive that could cause some features to break if the archive were located anywhere but at the root level of the corresponding target.
• Fixed a bug whereby the archiving logic would produce an error if the archive data structure became out-of-sync with the filesystem with regards to a package becoming a folder. It now self heals if an attempt is made to archive a file that resides within a package rather than the package as a whole. This sort of problem was possible when enabling dissect packages on a sync task that was previously run with standard/merge package handling.
• When calling update_dyld_shared_cache as part of the ‘Optimizing’ phase of a bootable backup, some newly added arguments will not be passed to the utility on pre-10.14 systems since older OS’s don’t appear to handle them properly.
• Fixed a bug in the Sync Task Document Window Controller whereby a UI change was being performed in a background thread.
• Fixed a bug whereby inconsistent information could be returned about mounted disk images, causing a sync task target to lose information necessary to mount the disk image.
• Fixed a bug whereby the test to see if a sync target’s volume contained a bootable operating system was being performed on a file server connection. This was always destined to fail.
• Fixed a bug whereby when un-registering with the push notification server, we now properly re-establish hardware identity properties to prevent a reset from continuing to occur every time a push notification is sent.

CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS:

• Changed Strict Volume Identification to no longer examine deviceModel and deviceProtocol.
• Implemented full Diagnostic Logging support in the InterConneX connections.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug when communicating with an InterConneX sharespace as a target whereby it was not likely going to be able to copy into a locked folder.
• Fixed a bug whereby if invoking a Trial Sync and target validation fails, subsequent attempts to invoke a standard sync (after correcting the cause of the validation failure) would invoke Trial Sync again unexpectedly.
• Fixed a few diagnostic messages that were being generated in non-debug builds.
• Fixed the logic used to determine a unique, temporary file name for copying to a remote cloud or InterConneX target as it had concurrence issues and could return non-unique filenames if called simultaneously from different threads.
• Fixed a bug whereby setting the UF_HIDDEN, UF_IMMUTABLE and UF_APPEND BSD flags on a file stored in an InterConneX target was prone to setting random values for those flags.
• Fixed a bug whereby extracting a file path from a collection record could result in a corrupt path. This could lead to errors or even a crash.
• Fixed a bug whereby the read-only destination readiness test would report “Left target is read-only” when BOTH targets were read-only, even though it was a left-to-right sync.

ENHANCEMENTS AND CHANGES:

• Changed the algorithm for determining temporary file names to be less prone to natural filename collisions during concurrent copying tasks.
• Now handles any exceptions when obtaining attributes from an SFTP directory entry and treats this condition as a non-directory entry (i.e. it just skips it).
• When a comparison helper is called, the sync target’s file manager is now used to obtain information about the files being compared.
• Now validates any relative alias object created and compares it against the original item to catch potential mismatches.
• Now only replacing the reference to the task document when modifying a scheduled item if it has actually changed.
• Improved memory management in the Backblaze B2 storage provider.
• Added logic to the sync task document loader so that it can better deal with potentially damaged task documents.
• Significantly reduced the size of the scheduler database and the overhead of loading/saving it.
• More efficiently instantiate scheduled items from the scheduled items database to handle potentially corrupt elements.
• Modified how the scheduled item database gets saved so that multiple changes made in quick succession are coalesced before saving.
• Reduced app activation overhead by no longer reconstructing the Templates contextual menu on every activation of the app.
• Updated the Trial Sync results window to clean up a path to an item before passing that off to a helper tool or external service such a ‘Get Info in Finder’ to ensure that the path represents the file object on the real target and not a snapshotted version of it.
• Now performs a sync history reset (retaining exclusions) after changing Package Handling, Sync Operation, and Sync Triggers on a previously synchronized task document to ensure all appropriate information gets collected and items are handled correctly on the next run.
• Changed the terminology used to identify Backblaze B2 application keys & account IDs to match the latest B2 terminology and to be consistent (i.e. English) across all languages.
• All the cloud service connection profile editors have had their authentication’s credential fields set to character-wrap instead of word-wrap.
• Added logic that ensures any excluded file-pair does not have any other status set.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby the pre-defined AWS S3 endpoint strings were inadvertently translated in non-English languages.
• The ChronoAgentLocal-Console.log file is now being rolled-over automatically.
• Fixed some auto-layout problems in the AWS and Backblaze B2 connection profile editors.
• Fixed some bugs whereby many commands were not properly setting the thread-specific error property when they completed.
• Fixed a bug that occurs when launching comparison helper applications in a manner that was incompatible with files residing on an APFS snapshot volume.
• Fixed a bug whereby an alias located in the immediate descendant of a resolved folder alias would not be resolved correctly.
• Fixed a bug that was affecting the synchronizer’s ability to identify self-referencing aliases when ‘resolve aliases’ was in effect and the target currently referred to an APFS snapshot volume.
• Fixed a (harmless) bug that could result in wasted time and a guaranteed low-level error (and console messages) when trying to do Trial Sync or Sync Selection on an APFS snapshot.
• Fixed a bug in resolving an alias on an APFS snapshot.
• Fixed a bug whereby it was possible to convert an existing object that was marked as a symbolic link or directory to a regular file when updating attributes on Backblaze B2.
• Fixed a bug in the Backblaze B2 storage provider whereby it wasn’t always correctly identifying package files.
• Fixed a bug resolving an alias file where it was possible that it would resolve to a URL but a file pathname could not be extracted from the URL causing an exception.
• Fixed a bug whereby when presenting an error caused by enumerating folders in the file system, the object used to contain information about the error was volatile and could be corrupted by another thread that was preparing to present a different error likely resulting in a crash.
• Fixed a bug whereby marking a folder node for exclusion would release all children and setup a potential crash for any other code that has retained a direct reference to one of those children. This is possible in Trial Sync and sync-selection scenarios.
• Added logic to the outermost node processing loop that checks each node’s exclusion state before attempting to process it to prevent unwanted operations and/or potential crashes.
• Fixed a bug whereby attempting to retry a failed deletion of a file on the destination would trigger an unrecoverable, infinite loop and potentially cause a crash or memory consumption.
• Fixed a bug whereby retry attempts would be performed on failed processing of nodes even if an abort condition were signaled.
• Fixed a bug whereby when editing a previously created “When independent volume mounts” scheduled item, a “Connect” message was not being sent to the independent volume specifier. Thus the volume would always appear as “Not available” in the user interface even though it was.
• Fixed a bug in the file system notification trigger that would not reliably start a live filesystem trigger after it was created.
• Fixed a bug in the file system notification trigger that would not reliably remove a live filesystem trigger after it was disabled or deleted.
• Fixed a bug whereby package merging between a source file system that supports millisecond timestamps (APFS) and a destination that doesn’t could result in failure to efficiently merge.

ENHANCEMENTS AND CHANGES:

• We now allow a bucket name to be specified on the Advanced tab of the AWS S3 Connection Profile editor and automatically display this as the only choice available when connecting to S3 with that profile.
• The Backblaze B2 Storage Provider is now capable of establishing connections using Application Keys.
• Enhanced Security.
• The Open & Sync, Open & Trial Sync and Open & Validate operations now wait longer after opening the task document before issuing commands.
• Tweaked how messages are posted to the synchronizer log at sync completion.
• Adjusted the queuing and management of concurrent operations.
• Implemented new console logging mechanism whereby we no longer redirect stderr and stout and instead log messages directly to ChronoSync-Console.log and ChronoSync-Scheduler-Console.log.
• When executing shell tasks, we now capture stderr and forward any output to our console logs.
• SFTP: Enhanced connection stall/drop detection.
• SFTP: Enhanced diagnostic messages if logging is enabled.
• Backblaze B2: A 403 error is now reported as “Disk quota exceeded” instead of “No space on device” since the error is generated when all transactions are used up.
• Modified error handling for ‘parameter errors’ generated when pre-allocating space for large files.
• When a preference pane is first displayed, we now explicitly remove focus from any controls.
• Improved global exception handling.
• Modified auto-quit behavior in certain situations.
• Corrected some auto layout problems in various languages.
• Tweaked the bootable blacklist to exclude more folders.
• When un-mounting a volume and un-mounting a snapshot, we now try to prevent blocking indefinitely if the volume cannot be unmounted.
• Added logic so that the “Show ChronoSync Menu” preference setting is asserted to NO if the Background Scheduler is not presently running. Attempting to change this value to YES will launch the Background Scheduler. If that fails, the preference value is not changed.
• Updated various resources to transition away from using red text to present a duplicate folder/file name (and similar) warnings.
• Implemented a change to how the standard file manager retrieves SpotlightComments from files.
• Made a minor change to how Spotlight Comments are set by the standard file manager.
• Enhanced diagnostic logging.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby if a contained sync task’s log was being displayed in a stand-alone window and the Container task was started, the stand-alone log window would not automatically close.
• SFTP: Fixed a potential bug whereby losing a connection after reading one or more directory entries could obscure the error and return a partial directory listing.
• SFTP: Fixed a bug whereby the SFTP RSA key-file selection dialog was not using a localized string for the “Select” button.
• Fixed a bug whereby remote checksum calculations used to Verify Copied Data or by the Validator was not properly ignoring alias files or resource forks (if ignored by the synchronizer). Requires communication with an updated ChronoAgent to work.
• Fixed a bug whereby streamed file copies to a remote agent that requires them (InterConneX) was not skipping alias files or resource forks if the caller required it.
• Fixed a bug whereby resolving symbolic links on a remote InterConneX connection could result in an incorrect absolute path. This had the most visible effect of sometimes causing the “_Archived Items” folder not to be recognized.
• We now correctly standardize the /private/opt path.
• We now collect EA and ACL digest values when obtaining metadata for a copied file system object if the synchronizer is triggering on those attributes.
• Corrected some improper translations in the Scheduled Item editor.
• Fixed a bug whereby changing the enabled state of a tab-view item would not necessarily result in a visual update on screen. This happened on Mojave but not older OS’s.
• Reduced the likelihood of a visual artifact occurring on the Options panel when first expanding any sub-panels.
• Fixed a bug in the Finder Tags Rule Setup Panel whereby having an extraordinary number of tags defined resulted in an exceptionally tall setup panel. It could even be so tall that it expanded off the bottom of the screen.Existing tags are now displayed in a scrollable view that is limited to ten rows in height.•Fixed a problem whereby the Basic User/Group Mapper was using a graphic that was not dark-mode friendly.
• Reworked the Synchronizer so it is now correctly waits for each target to FULLY connect, preventing a potential problem whereby it aborts prematurely.
• Fixed a bug whereby log messages posted when a Container Synchronizer was performing a scheduled execution would not be formatted correctly.
• Fixed a bug whereby there was no constraint for the minimum height of theDocuments table in the Container Task editor (non-English languages only).
• Fixed a bug where the ‘Path:’ label (in the file info popup window in the Organizer) would sometimes not be vertically aligned with its corresponding path data field on older version of macOS.
• Fixed a bug where the filter pop-up menu controls (in the Organizer) would sometimes not be vertically aligned with their label text on older versions of macOS.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a log was being presented stand-alone and then its corresponding document was opened, the ‘filter level’ of the stand-alone log would not be applied to the documents’ log when attaching to the stand-alone log. This could result in incorrect entries being displayed until the filter level was modified by the user.
• Fixed a bug associated with managing the control panels array in the Options panel.
• Fixed a bug when copying a folder that has a custom icon, and the folder has restrictive permissions (e.g. r-x —- —-), an error will be generated when trying to apply the custom icon to the folder. This will result in the folder as a whole being flagged with an error, which leads to deletion. No files/folder within it will be copied and will all generate errors.
• Fixed a bug whereby when instantiating the global, shared File Manager, the new object was not issued a ‘connect’ message. This was leading to incorrect state variables which could cause problems for any caller that cared.
• Fixed a pair of bugs in the tickle thread management when reclaiming a stalled session.
• Fixed a bug whereby communicating with Finder to get & set file comments was leaking Mach ports on Mojave.
• Fixed some visual artifacts that were displayed within the custom Target Selector’s file browser.

UI CHANGES:

• Task naming fields in all of the Assistants are now wider and no longer word wrap.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Added logic that tests if a disk image’s parent volume resides on an SSD, in which case the disk image itself is denoted as an SSD. This affects the parallel file copying logic.
• Added logic to cleanup an extended attribute that may have been applied to the user’s home folder as part of a long-ago abandoned licensing scheme.
• When ChronoAgent connections are establish, information about the nature of the connection is sent to the ChronoAgent much earlier in the connection process.
• The Validator will no longer include ‘Type/Creator Codes’ in its Recommended Settings if either target is an InterConneX sharespace, but only if InterConneX is less than v1.3.0.
• It is now less likely to timeout when un-mounting volumes or mounting disk images over a ChronoAgent or “Admin Access” connection.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug that could raise an exception when opening or interacting with a Container Task Document on macOS 10.11.x.
• Fixed a bug whereby Finder Tags attached to files were not being decoded into a format that the Finder Tags rule could understand. Thus the rule always failed to detect specific flags.
• Fixed a bug that could cause folder enumeration errors on a mounted disk image over a remote ChronoAgent connection if the disk image was APFS formatted and stored on an HFS file system.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Disk Image, Arbitrary Folder and Multiple Folders Assistants were not properly enabling the “Don’t create empty folders” setting of the generate sync tasks(s) if document-type filtering was enabled.
• Fixed a bug whereby all the Modifier Assistants would wipe out any custom tags assigned to sync task documents that were modified.
• Fixed a bug whereby you could not target a sub-folder in an InterConneX sharespace.
• Fixed a bug whereby restoring from the archive to a custom folder wasn’t working if the archive’s target connected to anything but “Mounted Volumes.”
• Fixed a bug whereby file copy operations and attribute-only copy operations were not responding to certain file system errors the same way.
• Fixed a bug whereby having ‘Strict Volume Identification’ OFF was not working for locally attached devices.
• Fixed a bug whereby losing connection to a target’s remote file manager before a target path had been specified would make it impossible to reconnect to the remote file manager.
• Fixed a bug whereby if creating a bootable backup to a remotely mounted, APFS formatted disk image over a ChronoAgent connection, if any of the device identifiers for the Preboot or Recovery volumes on the remote disk image happened to be the same as the Preboot/Recovery volumes on the source volume, ChronoSync would become confused and generate an error.
• Fixed a bug whereby if creating a bootable backup to an APFS formatted disk image, it was possible for ChronoSync to report that it could not create the Preboot and/or Recovery volumes even though it had successfully done so.
• Fixed a bug whereby files denoted as aliases by older, Carbon and pre-Carbon era software were susceptible to not being correctly identified as aliases.
• Fixed a bug that could result in the improper identification of target volumes if there was more than one locally mounted volume that shared the same unique volume identifier.
• Fixed a bug whereby certain kinds of pre- and post- sync AppleScript would not execute properly.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Optimized APFS Support for faster file scanning and copying.
• A new ‘Freeze file system’ option allowing you to take a snapshot of your filesystem before syncing.
• Mojave Dark Mode support.
• Full Disk Access assistant to grant ChronoSync permission to fully access your files.
• A completely overhauled ChronoSync Organizer window with better sorting and organization options, along with a toolbar, allowing easier access to task functions.
• Improved Restore function allows you to recover data directly and with greater control from the Analyze panel.
• Touch ID Support feature to allow ChronoSync to access system data.
• Smarter Assistants that can format drives and disk images using an APFS filesystem.
• New “Running Scheduled Tasks” System menu option to monitor your scheduled tasks without having to open ChronoSync.
• Improved Container Editor interface includes a “Special Notes” section and now displays more information about each contained task.
• Can now instantly access task logs directly from the ChronoSync Organizer window.
• Better management of ChronoAgent connections.
• Faster launch and shutdown times.
• More efficient Amazon S3 and Backblaze B2 data transfers
• A new Validator “Recommended Settings” button.
• …& much more!

These enhancements are delivered along with numerous bug fixes, tweaks and improvements. See the details of all the changes in the ChronoSync v4.9.0 Enhancements, Changes and Bug Fixes tech note.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Added support for path-style URLs in the Amazon S3 Connection.
• Added intelligence to the Amazon S3 connection setup process so that the “Path-style URLs” setting is automatically enabled during a “Test” connection if the remote server requires it.
• Constructed URLS no longer escape the ‘/’ character when appending the object key in the Amazon S3 Connection.
• We now include the ‘Date’ header when constructing the string that is used to sign any request to Amazon S3 connections.
• Improved the responsiveness when trying to abort agent-based tasks after a connection is abruptly broken.
• Changed the behavior of “Open Other…” so that it defaults to the current location of the “Task Documents” folder as specified in the “ChronoSync->Preferences->General” panel.
• Added logic to prevent sync-on-launch and sync-on-quit jobs from running when ChronoSync is launched and quit via scheduled task execution.
• Limited requests for some unneeded volume data which results in slightly more efficient operations on HFS+ volumes in certain instances.
• Volume mount checks now occur within their own autorelease pool.
• The file format accessory view is now only displayed on Save if the current document is NOT a v4 document format.
• Fixed various minor auto-layout problems, tooltips and spelling errors throughout the App.
• Update Online Help.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a potential crash if a log window was left open while the parent document window was closed by the user.
• Fixed a bug whereby auto-exclusion of root folder items was not properly occurring.
• Fixed a bug whereby the “Optimizing” message during a bootable backup would not be displayed under certain circumstances.
• Fixed a minor bug whereby the wrong Resource Fork handling mode was set briefly after connection with the remote file manager is established.
• Fixed a bug whereby the diagnostic setting was not being automatically applied to previously created task documents.
• Fixed a bug whereby pasting a rule into a group would not set the rule’s parent properly, eventually resulting in an exception being raised.
• Fixed a bug whereby opening a task document on the Archive panel would result in no archive path being displayed.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Google Cloud service object was not being deallocated after a connection was closed.
• Fixed a potential problem where an occasional exception while browsing files on an ‘Admin Access’ connection was being thrown.
• Fixed a bug whereby the online help was not being linked from the B2 Connection Profile editor.
• Fixed a bug whereby the test for nested folders in the Multi-Folder Assistant could easily be tricked by partially matching folder names e.g. “/Test Folder 2/Subfolder” would be flagged as a child of “/Test Folder”.
• Fixed a bug whereby the custom folder selector wasn’t being displayed when downloading an update.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Added support to connect directly to the BackBlaze B2 cloud service.
• Added new Dock menu items to provide quick access to open the ChronoSync Organizer and Scheduled Task Manager windows.
• The Backup to Disk Image Assistant now has a relaxed storage space requirement when creating a sparse/sparse bundle disk image. As long as we’re not sizing the image based on the source, we will allow the creation of disk images with only a minimal amount of free space on the destination. This allows you to create, for example, a 1 GB disk image when only 700 MB is free.
• We now makes sure that a connection is NOT in progress when attempting to mount volumes or verify targets.
• We eliminated the duplicate ChronoSync Organizer window entry from the Window menu.
• The ‘percentComplete’ reported by a Sync Task now subtracts any in-progress file copies before calculating the percentage to provide more accurate progress reporting in places such as the Scheduled Task Manager and Task Container Task List panel.
• We reworked the logic associated with ChronoSync starting up ChronoAgentLocal and determining if it is running and ready for business.
• We now post “Reset sync history” to the synchronizer’s log whenever a “Reset Sync History” operation is performed.
• We added log messages that get posted when updating the Preboot volume on an APFS bootable backup.
• We now always attempt to delete the mount point for the Preboot volume even if the unmount attempt fails (which probably happens because it wasn’t mounted).
• When running the updatePreboot command after an APFS bootable backup, we now better deal with errors caused by deleted directory service users.
• Added extensive workaround logic to deal with diskutil’s newfound (10.13.4) inability to create & mount APFS auxiliary volumes at custom mount points.
• Added logic to deal with problems with diskutil not mounting APFS auxiliary volumes on DiskImages (a problem which existed prior to 10.13.4).
• We added an exception handler to manage potential system exceptions that could occur when requesting removable volume insertion.
• We added an exception handler to prevent problems displaying the Task Container Task List.
• We added more descriptive error strings for the SSL-related error codes -1200 thru -1206.
• Changed some diagnostic error messages so that they always get posted, not just on debug builds.
• Updated localizations.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug in the Google Cloud connection whereby replaced files would have the ‘hidden’ attribute set.
• Fixed a potential error in the Google Cloud connection by making sure we have buffered data available to re-attempt an upload for the previous data block, if requested.
• Fixed a bug in the S3 connection whereby replaced files would have the ‘hidden’ attribute set.
• Fixed an inefficient attribute caching bug when connected to Amazon S3 with no metadata preservation enabled.
• Fixed a bug whereby the “Get” localized string had the incorrect key.
• Fixed a bug whereby the sync statistics (scan count, error count, etc) would not be properly updated when processing items concurrently in a contained synchronizer task. This would yield inconsistently wrong summary statistics, though it wouldn’t affect the accuracy of the
  sync/backup task.
• Fixed a potential hang when monitoring the startup of ChronoAgentLocal.
• Fixed an Assistant UI glitch that caused the feedback of individual steps of the task creation process to be cut-off if they were too wide.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Added logic to all of the assistants that ensures the ‘Tasks’ folder exists before proceeding to name & generate a task document.
• Introduced a minor tweak to how detailed file information is displayed to prevent queueing up a bunch of display requests for the same item.
• ChronoSync now disables the keychain UI to (theoretically) eliminate the “ChronoSync wants to use the ChronoAgentLocalKeychain” dialog from appearing.
• Enhanced error logging for keychain API errors to help when debugging keychain access issues.
• Implemented a completely different method of determining if ChronoAgentLocal is running and ready to receive connections.
• Implemented a feature whereby holding the OPTION key down while switching to the Advanced tab of any Connection Profile Editor reveals the ‘Diagnostic logging’ option, provided the connection profile supports it.
• ChronoSync now intelligently disables the “Archive replaced files” option if it is not currently ON and the destination file manager doesn’t support archiving as well as chooses the appropriate deletion method.
• Added workaround logic to better deal with file managers that may not properly aggregate packages.
• Added logic to deal with the possibility of exceptions being thrown when a filename has a malformed UTF-16 name.
• Hardened the log entry logic to better handle subtle corruption at the expense of losing a log entry.
• Added exception handlers to deal with unexpected exceptions that may occur at certain points within the file deletion and file copy operations.
• Reworked how the copy buffer size is negotiated between targets.
• Implemented a new, ‘System-to-Server’ Readiness Error that will prevent a task from running if it targets the boot volume as the source and a file server as the destination.
• Made a change to the Container Synchronizer that should allow it to abort much quicker.
• ChronoSync now only simulates user activity on scheduled runs when the wake-to-sync preference setting is enabled to prevent unwanted screen wakes.
• The Validator will now retry after content mismatches to eliminate a lot of ‘false negatives’ on cloud-based validations.
• ChronoSync now posts more detailed error codes to the log for certain validation errors.
• ChronoSync now posts error messages to the console log if a file system error occurs when refreshing an item’s attributes.
• Tweaked the formula for calculating maxConcurrentOperationCount so that fewer operation threads are spawned for cloud connections.
• Enhanced the retry delay logic to better respond to aborts during the delay.
• Added diagnostics that get generated when the Bootable Backup or Disk Image Assistant fails to save the generated document.
• Updated tooltips.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a CRITICAL bug introduced in v4.8.4 whereby hard links recreated on the destination of a sync would all reference the same exact object.
• Added logic that will force all multi-hard linked files to be synchronized on the next full run so that the new hard-link logic can correctly recreate them on the destination. If a sync has not been run since Nov 27th, 2017, the fix doesn’t need to be applied since that is the earliest date that the the bug could have appeared.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a user abort occurred at precisely the wrong time, it was possible that the item(s) being scanned at the time of the abort would be force-synchronized even if they didn’t need to be copied.
• Fixed a bug whereby if an open Container Task Document job was invoked from the Scheduled Tasks Manager window, there was a chance that aborting the run would lead to a hang.
• Fixed a bug that could cause crashes if scheduling/clearing power manager wake events returns an unexpected error.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a deadlock if scheduler jobs were being run with their sync/container task document windows open.
• Fixed a bug whereby if the user chose a custom grace interval but not a max interval, the grace interval was allowed to exceed the default max interval of 300 seconds. We now assert a max interval of 3x the grace interval in such circumstances.
• Fixed a bug whereby you could not open the Synchronizer Log window when running a Validation.
• Fixed a bug when aborting Amazon S3 connections.
• Fixed a bug whereby a never-saved task document that is ‘saved as default’ would become the default document rather than remaining unsaved.
• Fixed a bug whereby a never-saved task document that is saved as a Template would become the template document rather than remaining unsaved.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Bootable Backup Assistant to spin indefinitely if saving the generated document failed.
• Fixed a bug whereby selecting a bookmark in the Log window was stealing focus from the log list.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

General

• Added more intelligence to the Analyze Panel in an effort to reduce/eliminate unnecessary refreshes.
• Posting entries to a task document’s log during a synchronization is now less thread intensive.
• A ‘bootable’ trigger mode will now enable the EA and ACL variable attribute triggers, but only if both targets support ‘ExtendedInfoCollection’ i.e. not for connections to old versions of ChronoAgent.
• Implemented an alternate technique for aggregating package files that is much faster on APFS file systems. We now use optimal package aggregation techniques depending on whether we are accessing an APFS or HFS filesystem.
• Internally, all timestamp manipulations & comparisons are done with sub-second precision. The UI still floors to the nearest second, however.
• The Scheduled Tasks database is now loaded and instantiated in a background thread. If you have a large schedule and/or slower computer, ChronoSync will launch faster but you’ll see a delay before scheduled entries appear.
• The filesystem validation logic employed when scanning the contents of folders will now try to adapt to inconsistencies detected in the file system rather than immediately throwing an error. This is because High Sierra is reporting a lot of inconsistencies, especially with SMB mounted file servers.
• If package dissection is OFF, maintaining an archive which contains package files is now much more efficient. Depending on the nature of your sync/backup task, this could yield a significant performance improvement.
• Added the ‘Post more detailed information to the log’ checkbox to the Validator UI. This determines whether or not detailed info will be posted about mismatches. This used to be controlled by the Synchronizer’s equivalent property but now you can control the behavior independently.
• Now prevents the system from sleeping when restoring or deleting a batch of files in the Analyze Panel.
• The process of connecting to target file managers in a scheduled sync (one that runs without a user interface) is now more streamlined & efficient.
• Added new Chinese and Paris endpoints to the Amazon S3 Connection Profile Editor.
• When creating a folder as part of a sync operation, we now wrap the operation in a compound task.

Scheduler

• When the system wakes from sleep, we added logic in an attempt to thwart the problem where, sometimes, the system wakes from sleep for a scheduled sync, but then goes back to sleep before the sync can be started.
• Reworked the 65 second wake assertion we create after invoking a scheduled sync so that it asserts user activity during that time frame if wake-to-sync is enabled.
• Added additional operations that generate diagnostics if schedulerDebug is enabled.
• The application’s scheduler and scheduled items manager now waits for the background scheduler to be launched before starting themselves up (but won’t wait more than 5 seconds).
• When the system wakes from sleep, we now attempt to schedule the next system wake event. This is an attempt to thwart the problem where a system may stop sending us sleep notifications before putting the system to sleep.
• We now schedule a wake event whenever a change is detected in the scheduled items database, the WakeToSync preference is enabled, or the scheduler is turned ON/RESUMED. We also remove all of our scheduled wake events whenever the WakeToSync preference is disabled, or the scheduler is turned OFF/SUSPENDED.
• Implemented a scheme whereby a deadlock in the coordinated read/write of the scheduler database can be broken, thereby disabling the coordinated read-write system. The deadlock breaks after 15 seconds and an error message will be posted to the ChronoSync-Console.log or ChronoSync-Scheduler-Console.log.
• Tweaked the heartbeat logic so that if it has been over 100 seconds since we last checked the schedule, we treat it as if it were an awake-from-sleep event.
• We now declare user activity at the beginning and end of a scheduled sync.

Bootable Backup

• /private/var/run and /private/var/tmp are no longer content- blacklisted for bootable backups.
• /private/var/vm is now content-blacklisted for bootable backups.
• Added logic to the bootable bless process that ensure /private/ var/vm exists on the destination.
• Added logic to the bootable synchronizer that will only ‘touch’ the system extension folders if .kext were actually copied/deleted by the sync. This triggers a rebuild of the kext caches.
• The Bootable Backup assistant now enables auto-mount for the destination device in all instances. It used to only do this if it was formatted as an encrypted volume by the assistant.
• Deleting a .dylib file is now considered ‘copying’ one, so the dylib caches will get rebuilt at the end of a bootable backup.

APFS Bootable Related

• Added initial set of console messages that get generated when synchronizing the APFS Recovery partition fails.
• When synchronizing the Recovery volume as part of an APFS bootable backup, we now dump the Recovery synchronizer’s log to the console if any errors were generated.
• Added diagnostic messages that get generated when preparing/ refreshing an APFS Preboot volume.
• If our initial manual prep of the Preboot volume fails, we now try to call updatePreboot to see if it can prep the volume. Previously, we only called updatePreboot after our manual prep succeeded.
• Added logic to make sure the destination Preboot volume is dismounted after calling the updatePreboot utility because that utility has a tendency to leave it mounted if it produces an error.
• All files and folders created while constructing an APFS Preboot volume are now owned by root:wheel.
• When refreshing an APFS Preboot volume, we now completely delete the /var/db folder in the volume’s Preboot container and let the upodatePreboot utility rebuild it from scratch.
• Modified the Bootable-Backup Recovery volume refresh logic to deal with situations where the source and destination volumes reside within the same APFS container.

ChronoAgent Connection Related

• Added a mechanism whereby the maximum number of pooled command sessions is limited by the maxPooledSessions property.
• The prepareToSync method now sets the maxPooledSessions property (if supported) of the target file manager based on the maximum number of concurrent operations plus two.

Cloud Related

• Added logic so that if the MIME type returned by the OS does not conform to “type/subtype”, the default MIME type (typically “binary/octet-stream”) is used as the result.

Miscellaneous

• Reduced the rate of update checks from the ChronoSync Scheduler to once every 24 hours (from once every 12). Our update-check server will be thankful.
• Changed the animation style of the ChronoSync Organizer window to ‘none’. Having it ‘zoom’ open all the time was deemed annoying.
• Added a 15 second wake assertion at application startup.
• We now explicitly set the NSAppSleepDisabled = YES application preference setting when launching the main ChronoSync application.
• Enhanced the DocumentRef’s ‘verify’ method (used by ChronoSync Organizer) so that changes to the ‘displayName’ property are made on the main thread. This is in response to some messages about modifying the auto-layout engine on a background thread that were observed in customer-supplied logs, even though this has never been witnessed.
• Added logic to the SyncTarget’s setFileTimestamps:atPath: method which will use an alternate API for setting creation & modification date if the item resides on a non-AFP file server while running High Sierra (or later). This method is mainly used on folders.
• Added more FMAudit diagnostics to the createFileNamed:inFolder:attributes:flags:newFileRef: method to try and shed light on mysterious permission errors.
• We now redirect stdout to our private log files in addition to stderr.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug in the Remote Target Selector whereby folder contents presented to the user were not being sorted.
• Hardened some code in the remote target selector UI to reduce the possibility of exceptions getting raised.
• Fixed a validator bug whereby sockets and devices were being included in orphan counts.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby if the user aborted a validation, the file that was presently being compared would get reported as being mismatched. That could cause confusion with the user.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby it would always skip invisible items if Ignore Invisibles was enabled. It really should only skip them if the *source* item is invisible. If it is a bidirectional sync, it should only skip if *both* items are invisible. Otherwise, it could be a mismatch and should be reported.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby the ‘Skip Aliases’ setting was being ignored when comparing the contents of file packages.
• We now clear the package aggregation cache of both target file managers before running a validation.
• Fixed a relatively rare problem which can occur when working off a bootable backup of a system which had ChronoSync installed, and the default document template contains target specifications for volumes that are still online.
• Fixed some bugs related to the mount-check performed prior to any mass file deletions (and periodically during a sync). The bugs would a) lead to ‘false positives’ meaning some file servers could erroneously have dismounts detected, and b) when such a dismount was detected, the error message was extremely unhelpful.
• Fixed a bug whereby, sometimes, authenticating for admin access would cause the Scheduled Tasks Manager window to stay hidden after authentication.
• When moving a file to an archive, we now have an exception handler to catch any exception raised in the process of enumerating a folder in the archive. It will now generate an error rather than throwing an unhandled exception.
• Fixed a bug whereby having the “Don’t create empty folders” setting enabled and running a Trial Sync would skip any folders that need deletion or attribute-only syncs.
• Fixed a bug whereby the display of Roll Back Errors was not interpreting the temporary pre-determination value that was set by previous invocations of the routine which would lead to it being interpreted as the status flags for other roll back warnings.
• Fixed a bug whereby in some cases, posting a verbose log message about file deletion would only show the filename instead of the relative path.
• Fixed a bug whereby some systems mis-report information about running processes and this was confusing ChronoSync into believing that ‘Admin Access’ was not available. The result was an inability to choose “Mounted Volumes (Admin Access)” and might also be the cause of nagging Keychain prompts that some users have reported.
• Fixed a bug when performing a coordinated load of the scheduler database whereby we were briefly referencing a released object (both in ChronoSync and ChronoSync Scheduler).
• Fixed a bug when performing a coordinated load of the Connection Profiles data store whereby we were briefly referencing a disposed object.
• Fixed a bug whereby agent connections (including ‘Admin Access’) that support command pooling were creating superfluous, ‘dead’ command sessions during initial connection and whenever the command session pool filled up.
• Fixed a bug whereby the ChronoSync Scheduler’s system menu could get ‘stuck’ displaying the last frame of an animation. The frame would remain until the user interacted with the menu or another scheduled sync caused it to snap out of the stuck state.
• Fixed a bug whereby it was possible that a popover window would get released before it had fully dismissed. This tended to cause crashes on some systems (mostly 10.11, it seems).
• We now delete the ChronoAgent port semaphore file on the destination (if it exists) during the bless phase of a bootable backup. This should eliminate the ‘Abnormal Startup’ warning that ChronoAgent will present when you boot off the destination.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Implemented the all-new ‘False Mount’ Readiness Test that checks to see if one of the targets is referencing a folder in the “/Volumes” folder.
• Eliminated the possibility that ChronoSync would ever create a phantom volume in the “/Volumes” folder because the OS lost connection to a server or local device but failed to return an error message to ChronoSync.
• Added logic to work around High Sierra bugs when renaming files on file servers as part of a Safe Copy or Archive Move operation.
• The Validator and sync engine now filter out some legacy Finder Flags when detecting attribute changes.
• Tweaked the IO throttling logic so that full throttle is restored after 10 seconds of system inactivity versus 30 in previous versions.
• Changed auto-update checks so they are not performed when syncs are running.
• Removed a bunch of unnecessary user interface updates when changing a target’s volume.
• Invoking the ChronoSync Organizer or Preferences window will now terminate auto-quit, if we were invoked for scheduled synchronization.
• We now consistently produce data verification diagnostic output based on the DataVerificationAudit plist setting.
• Improved mirrored log file behavior by recreating mirrored log file if necessary to avoid situations where the mirrored log file may have been deleted while still posting messages to it.
• The ChronoSync Scheduler now tries to keep the system awake a little longer after triggering a task to run.
• Improved user-controlled diagnostics for the Scheduler and Validator.

BUG FIXES:

• Changed how the ChronoSync Scheduler checks for missed jobs that could lead to erroneous triggering of sync jobs after a system wakes.
• Fixed a bug whereby ‘Run Once’ scheduled items would not always run on the minute they were intended but would launch one minute later.
• Fixed a bug whereby ‘Run Once’ scheduled items would repeatedly run after their first execution because they would not disable themselves.
• We now turn off left or right target triggers if they are enabled but the target volume is not suitable for a live-trigger scheduled item.
• Fixed a bug whereby adding a scheduled item from the Scheduled Task Manager window would fail if the first Sync Task document known to the program could not be found on disk.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby marking mismatched entries would result in forced-conflicts if the task was configured as a mirror.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby it could try to reference an object that doesn’t exist, resulting in a crash.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby a NULL Finder comment was considered different from an empty Finder comment.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby, when NOT validating out-of-sync items, we failed to have the synchronizer refresh the attributes of each file pair. That could lead to an incorrect determination of whether or not the file-pair is considered out-of-sync.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Validator had no additional logic to deal with package mismatch scenarios. It was thus prone to reporting modification date differences when one target thought a folder was a package but the other didn’t.
• Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby the ‘Package Handling’ setting of ‘dissect’ was not being taken into consideration when validating modification dates.
• Fixed a bug whereby translated resources for the Access Restrictions user interface were never merged in with the program.
• Fixed a localization bug whereby target descriptions were not being properly constructed in Japanese.
• Fixed a crashing bug introduced by a change to how Google Cloud returns metadata values. The change occurred somewhere around Nov. 1st, 2017.
• Fixed a bug whereby changing the connection method for a target between “Mounted Volumes” and “Mounted Volumes (Admin Access)” would revert to a “/Volumes” relative path on the boot drive.
• Fixed a bug whereby the “Confirmation Test” connection role was never being sent to a ChronoAgent when testing a connection.
• Fixed a bug that occurs when probing SFTP servers for their capabilities that could result in a failed connection.
• Fixed a bug whereby selecting a target identical to the previous one would not clear the “Configured on a different system” readiness warning.
• Fixed bug in preparing and updating the progress bar when performing a Sync Selection or Trial Sync Selection operation.
• Fixed a bug whereby disabling the summary sheet in a container task window would prevent the window from being closable.
• The Trial Sync Selector sheet window no longer crashes if the task is aborted behind its back (such as when targets become lost).
• Fixed a bug whereby resetting the sync history would not ‘forget’ certain values.
• Fixed a bug whereby evaluating rules was not thread safe resulting in possible problems during concurrent operations.
• Fixed a bug whereby a forced attribute sync on a folder would trick the pruning logic into pruning that folder if no child items were processed.
• Fixed a bug whereby file servers could fail to refresh their displayed state in the Analyze Panel after performing a sync, deletion or restore.
• Fixed a bug whereby trying to apply attributes to a folder that was really an alias to a folder (with resolve aliases enabled), would wipe out the alias.
• Fixed a bug whereby resetting the status of a force-sync’d file-pair would not refresh the file pair and thus not immediately show the correct status of the file pair.
• Implemented a workaround to a bug in the ‘bless’ utility whereby a bootable APFS volume might not appear when invoking Startup Manager (Option-Boot).
• Fixed a bug that affected the Bootable Backup assistant to ensure that if multiple volumes exist in an APFS container, only bootable volumes can be chosen as the source target.
• Fixed a bug whereby presenting the Termination Window (i.e. “There are scheduled syncs running, do you really want to quit?”) would eventually cause the menubar to stop animating.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Tweaked the “Optimization” phase of bootable backup tasks so that the destination volumes would boot more efficiently and reliably, especially if they contain a High Sierra installation.

BUG FIXES:

• When calculating the next scheduled run date of a scheduled task, the program (both ChronoSync and ChronoSync Scheduler) would hang if the next run date fell after a Daylight Savings Time-to-Standard Time transition.
• Running a container task that encapsulated multiple sync/backup tasks that simultaneously process many files (via concurrent operations) was susceptible to crashing when closing the container task window.
• Specifying a source or destination target that resided on an APFS filesystem would result in the “Strict volume identification” setting defaulting to OFF.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Full macOS 10.13-High Sierra compatibility.
• Added a feature whereby holding OPTION down when selecting a task for any Modifier Assistants will now select/deselect ALL listed tasks.
• Added the ability to schedule a free standing task document if no tasks are being tracked in the ChronoSync Organizer window. Also, holding the OPTION key down when clicking (+) in the Scheduled Task Manager window then displays the File Chooser to select a free-standing task document.
• The user interface animations for all Assistants and the Validator function were reimplemented to work around High Sierra shortcomings.
• The ChronoSync Installer and Uninstaller were modified to work around High Sierra bugs.
• When creating a bootable backup to an APFS volume, the VM, Preboot and Recovery volume structure in the destination APFS container is constructed.
• Added the correct Analyze Panel status icons (for attributes-only syncs) to the online help.
• The process of blessing a destination volume in a bootable backup is now more verbose, displaying fine-grain progress to the user and posting relevant errors to the log.
• When the Bootable backup assistant is presenting a warning that the destination volume is about to be erased, it checks to see if it is an APFS container with additional data volumes within it. If so, it presents those additional volume names as part of the warning.
• The Readiness Warning stating that APFS destination volumes may not be bootable is only reported if APFS volume operations cannot be performed on the destination.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed several bugs associated with the display of Trial Expiration notices when running the application in Trial Mode.
• Fixed several bugs associated with performing automatic update checks.
• Fixed a memory consumption problem that occurs in kernel_task memory when verifying large files.
• Fixed a bug in the Container Editor’s task list whereby user modifications to the width of the Task Name column would not be preserved after closing the document.
• Fixed a bug in the ChronoSync Organizer whereby the view that displays each document’s information would not automatically grow with the width of the window.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a deadlock between the main ChronoSync application and the ChronoSync Scheduler. Under the wrong circumstances they would both wait on the other to obtain access to the scheduled items database.
• Fixed a layout bug whereby unusually long task names would scroll off the top of the Scheduled Item Editor window.
• Fixed a bug whereby hitting “Test” when multiple Push Receiver IDs were specified, and a space was used to separate the IDs, the test would fail. This existed in the sync task Options panel and the Notifications Assistant.
• Fixed a bug whereby in the same scenario above (space between IDs), the Notifications Assistant would not store the Receiver IDs into the modified documents properly.
• Enabling Push Notifications in the Notifications Assistant now forces “Only on Errors” setting OFF. Previously, it only did this if Push Notifications was OFF and it was turning them ON.
• Fixed a bug whereby pausing a running sync wouldn’t necessarily pause it.
• Eliminated a specific type of crash that could occur when scrolling through entries in the Trial Sync selector window.
• Eliminated some data verification audit messages that were always getting posted to the console.
• The Container synchronizer now properly updates the correct duration property on sync completion so that push notifications to ChronoMonitor will contain the correct duration value.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Added the ability to uniquely identify APFS volumes.
• Added the ability to determine the partitioning scheme of APFS formatted volumes.
• Added the ability to correctly identify whether or not an APFS volume has a bootable OS on it.
• Added the ability to mount Encrypted APFS volumes.
• Added the ‘APFS bootable destination’ readiness test that warns that a destination APFS volume may not be bootable which will be removed once we can guarantee APFS boot-ability.
• Added support for cut, copy, paste operations on Rules.
• Added the ability to detect when Sync Task is moved to another system.
• Added the ‘configuration system mismatch’ readiness warning that gets displayed when a Sync Task is opened on a system other than that which created/edited it.
• Improved Scheduler efficiency by reworking algorithms that calculate next item run date.
• When closing a scheduled item editor window, we now re-display the ChronoSync Organizer window, if necessary.
• Added “/Network” and “/dev” to the bootable blacklist.
• As part of the Bootable Backup, we now ensure that a “Network” folder is created on the destination and that it is marked ‘hidden.’
• The sync completion notice now displays a “View Log” button if the just-completed synchronization generated an error that was posted to the log.
• Improved Document and Window Close behavior by reordering the operations that occur when deallocating the user-interface resources.
• Standardized the behavior of focusing on the associated entry field when an particular option is turned on or selected throughout the user-interface.
• Added “.strings” to the default set of files that will be opened using OpenDiff when invoking the Compare function. This will only affect new installs.
• Updated and expanded file types covered by the “Common…” set of rule templates.
• Changed the Installer’s minimum OS requirement to 10.10.
• Added logic to detect the vendor name of any locally attached drive.
• Added many more log messages to the installer to facilitate troubleshooting failed installs.
• We now display a “Trial Expired” notification after the trial period has elapsed.
• Improved in-app Update Check Now performance.
• Added a “Buy” button to the Trial Period notice.
• Added Postbox email bridge.
• Added Airmail 3 email bridge.
• Remove QuickMail from email bridges.
• Numerous terminology changes, user-interface changes and tweaks.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug where the installer was not always properly identifying an existing login item and would fail to re-launch the Scheduler at the end of the installation.
• Changed the behavior of log mirroring so that if there is a problem opening/creating the mirrored log file, we no longer disable mirroring.
• Fixed a bug whereby adding messages that spanned multiple lines to the sync log could result in out-of-sequence log messages.
• Fixed a problem in the Log window whereby highlighted error text (in red) was very difficult to read.
• Fixed a potential hang condition by reorganizing thread locks.
• The Google API was not capable of returning more than 26,000 objects in a “folder” when automatic page fetching was enabled (which is what we do). Thus “folders” would never appear as if they contained more than this many files. If backing up a folder with more than this many files in it, ChronoSync would always copy the files beyond the 26,000 count because it would look like the files did not exist up on Google Cloud, even though they might.
• Fixed a potential crash by ensuring thread safety in string formatting calls.
• Fixed a bug whereby a connection to each target’s file manager was being made when both targets were being monitored to sync-on-mount. This would fail if either target was an Admin Access target.
• Fixed a bug in the synchronizer that was keeping track of hard link references in a non-thread safe manner. This could lead to crashes when running parallel ops.
• Changing target folders and resetting sync history will no longer purge exclusions and forced synchronizations. If the folders where exclusions and forced syncs are defined still exist after the target change, they will be retained.
• Fixed a bug in the MS-DOS filename restriction readiness test that was identifying APFS as MS-DOS.
• Fixed a bug whereby duplicating a rule that appeared below an expanded rule group would raise an exception.
• Fixed a bug whereby invoking the contextual popup on a non-focus rule list and invoking ‘Duplicate’ would not duplicate the desired item.
• Added an exception handler to the rule base.
• Fixed a bug whereby disabling a rule group would result in all contained rules being disabled when the sync task document was saved.
• Fixed a bug whereby changing a target’s connection method would never preserve sync outline customizations (exclusions, forced syncs) even in cases where they could be preserved.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Analyze and Archive panels that was causing Core Animation warnings on the console and possibly the cause of intermittent crashes.
• Added logic that forces all ChronoSync Organizer window resources to load before we try to display it in an attempt to fix the intermittent ‘tooltip crash’.
• Fixed a bug whereby scheduler induced sync when a container document window was opened would not set the completion flag when finished. Thus subsequent scheduled syncs would fail as long as the app was running.
• Fixed a problem whereby if a Container sync window were open and displaying the summary sheet from a previous, manually induced synchronization, a scheduled sync for that container would not be possible.
• Fixed a bug whereby the master container progress bar was being initialized on a background thread.
• Fixed a logic flaw whereby the next scheduled synchronization displayed in STM Window and the CS Menu would not always be correct. Another problem was that missed sync calculations would sometimes result in scheduled tasks running erroneously.
• Fixed a bug whereby running a scheduled sync with the corresponding sync task document window open could result in UI modification.
• Fixed a bug whereby changes to some properties of SFTP connection profiles would not get applied to existing documents that used the profile.
• Fixed a bug whereby the animated menubar icon during scheduled syncs would not occur under specific circumstances.
• Added experimental logic so that a ‘hang’ that occurs while collecting entries for a right target File Sharing Connection can actually be broken via an abort by the user.
• Worked around a nuisance bug that was causing console messages to the effect of “__weak variable at…”.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Implemented Readiness Warning to suggest ‘Bootable Backup’ Operation when the Startup Volume is the chosen target for any other ‘Operation’.
• Added logic to better preserve the currently selected Target path when changing the ‘Connect to:’ popup for a Target.
• Updated how keychain entries are managed.
• Changed the behavior of log mirroring so that if there is a problem opening/creating the mirrored log file, we no longer disable mirroring.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug in the AWS S3 Connection whereby the app could go into an infinite loop and eventually run out of system memory.
• Fixed a bug that would trigger a crash if a container or sync document’s Log window were displayed and frontmost, but then the parent sync/container window was closed without bringing it to the front.
• Fixed an exception that could be raised when closing a container document window when the window was not frontmost and instead resided behind a different type of window.
• Fixed a potential problem displaying the progress window content.
• Fixed a potential problem that could occur when displaying the Sync Completion window.
• Fixed a problem that could result in a crash when using Admin Access.
• Fixed several installer problems with variables and their use which could possibly result in the ChronoSync Scheduler not being relaunched after update.
• Fixed an installer problem that was not properly identifying existing login items that could possibly result in the ChronoSync Scheduler not being relaunched after update.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Lengthened certain timeouts associated with local agent connections.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug whereby the ChronoSync Scheduler would be spammed with quit notices from ChronoSync if the App was quit while a scheduled sync was running and the option was chosen to terminate all syncs.
• Fixed a bug in the ChronoSync Scheduler whereby if it received too many termination notifications in a short period of time, it would cause the scheduler to hang.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a deadlock if a Cloud Service Connection were told to disconnect while it was in the midst of collecting file system attributes.
• Fixed a bug whereby enabling “Resolve Aliases” and encountering a relative symbolic link that referenced a folder outside of the sync tree would not properly follow that link.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Enhanced cloud sync performance by creating parallel operations to copy and destroy multiple objects.
• Enhanced Analyze Panel responsiveness by avoiding blocking during refresh.
• Improved sync document save performance.
• Improved memory use efficiency.
• Added the extension “sh” as valid script files (for pre- post- and rule- script selection).
• Enhanced container e-mail notifications.
• Added logic to better recognize and mount re-located volumes.
• Added further fall-back logic when setting file and folder attributes in an attempt to better avoid parameter errors.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug to harden Sync Document loading as protection against encountering corrupted documents.
• Fixed a bug that generated erroneous errors when syncing files containing Resource Forks to Amazon S3 and Google Cloud.
• Tuned memory management options in build settings to reduce memory consumption when syncing to Amazon S3.
• Fixed a bug on the AWS S3 SDK that was causing problems if a bucket name has a period in it.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when sending e-mail notifications via certain SMTP service providers.
• Fixed an exception that could occur when closing Container Sync Documents.
• Fixed a bug that prevented display of Resource Fork information on the Analyze Panel prior to sync.
• Fixed a problem that could result in the Sync Document Log purging logged entries.
• Fixed a potential deadlock that could occur when gathering Volume information.
• Fixed a bug whereby post synchronization tasks would not be performed if pre-synchronization tasks failed.
• Eliminated a potential crash by ensuring we don’t access a possibly invalid object.
• Eliminated a memory leak in the push notification delivery procedure.
• Eliminated a memory leak whereby whatever panel was initially displayed when opening a saved sync document would not be released from memory when the sync document was closed.
• Fixed several minor UI issues including misspelling.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Implemented support for v4 authentication of AWS S3 commands.
• Updated the predefined set of AWS S3 endpoints to include all the latest, v4-only regions.
• Added the capability to specify a region identifier within the parenthesis to support future regions, or regions associated with S3 compatible services. If this syntax is used, the region identifier must be followed by /v4 or else v2 authentication will be used. An example of such an endpoint specification is: https://an-s3-enpoint-url.com (region-identifier/v4)
• Pre- and Post- sync shell scripts now receive an additional argument, the ‘Run Mode’ of the sync. 0=Standard, 1=Trial Sync and 2=Scheduled Sync.
• Updated any 2016 references to 2017.

BUG FIXES:

• Added logic to work around a memory leak in a system call on macOS 10.8. This affects uploading data to AWS S3. The solution applies only to macOS 10.8 and can be disabled, if needed.
• Added logic to address a problem where, in some instances, the local agent takes upwards of 10 seconds to access the local keychain. Added a retry for up to 30 seconds to account for the slow response.
• Fixed a bug in the Sync Document Log and Scheduler Log whereby log entries would appear to be truncated.
• Fixed a bug in the Scheduled Items editor whereby editing an item for which its corresponding sync document could not be located would not allow you to save any changes.
• Fixed a bug in the ‘Choose Target’ window whereby changing the selected volume in the left table by means of using the arrow keys on the keyboard would not trigger a volume change.
• Fixed a display bug in the ‘Choose Target’ window to account for the display of a scroll bar on the volumes list.
• Fixed a bug whereby the volumes list in the ‘Choose Target’ window would not scroll if there were more entries than were visible. This only affected macOS 10.8 and 10.9.
• Edited the Retina version of the ‘About’ dialog graphic so that it does not include a border frame.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Incorporated security updates and minor bug fixes to support SFTP protocols.
• Added additional connection tracing options for the AWS S3, Google Cloud and SFTP connection profiles.
• Improved the detailed log messages that are generated when diagnostic logging is enabled for AWS S3, Google Cloud and SFTP connection profiles.
• Added the “Ignore resource fork errors” option to the SFTP connection profile. When ON, any attempt to write resource fork data to files will silently fail, allowing data forks to be written and syncs to proceed without error.
• Added an “Edit” button next to the connection popup in the target panes of the Setup panel. Provides a convenient way to edit a connection profile. Only appears if the connection profile is editable.
• Added localized Spotlight keywords to the app bundle’s info.plist file.
• The Document Organizer does not allow dragged sync documents to be dropped on other applications. This prevents a potential problem where a sync document could be unexpectedly moved.
• Updated the target description displayed on the Target Pane of the Setup Panel to be more readable.
• We now wait up to 30 seconds for an encrypted volume to mount after it has been unlocked.
• Added and updated several localizations.

BUG FIXES:

• The SFTP connection now better handles generic error codes during the connection/pre-configuration process instead of failing to connect.
• The SFTP connection falls back to using “/” as the initial directory if the server returns errors when trying to set the initial directory.
• Fixed a bug in the SFTP connection profile editor whereby opening an existing profile would immediately advance the focus to the Password field if Password authentication was configured.
• Improved Target verification to prevent concurrent verification of the same target which, in some instances, can cause problems resulting in incomplete scheduled synchronizations.
• Fixed a problem where it was possible that targets were not verified prior to synchronization. The synchronizer now forces verification of targets before running.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the partition scheme information about a volume raised an exception.
• Addressed a misleading tooltip for the “Preserve resource forks” option.
• Eliminated a crash that could occur when closing a sync document window shortly after activating it.
• Fixed a visual artifact that occurred with Container Sync documents on Sierra when opening a document on the Documents panel and switching to the Options panel where big black rectangle would appear as the controls were added to the window.
• Fixed a bug related to SmartScan and old sync documents that did not record the ‘lastDataSize’ property of synchronized file-pairs. This problem only happens if an old sync document were ‘upgraded’ to include the Data Size trigger.
• Fixed a minor leak in the local agent connection profile that would leak the agent password every time it was retrieved from the keychain.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Significantly improved performance when syncing with Google Cloud Connections. Depending upon sync contents, up to a 20% improvement can be realized.
• Significantly Improved performance when syncing with Amazon S3 Cloud Connections. Depending upon sync contents, up to a 20% improvement can be realized.
• Improved tracking of DMG volume location to better handle mounting and unmounting DMGs as well as the volumes they reside on.
• Tweaked bandwidth limit calculations to more accurately match desired limits set in Connection Profiles.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash anytime after opening a Container Document even if the Container has since long been closed.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a DMG on a file server were un-mounted by ChronoSync, the file server would not be un-mountable.
• Fixed a bug whereby if targeting a DMG on a file server using “Mounted Volumes (Admin Access)”, the server containing the DMG would not get automatically mounted.
• Fixed a problem in Admin Access that could result in a crash under ideal timing circumstances.
• Fixed a bug whereby the readiness manager would erroneously state “You cannot perform a bootable backup with the current boot volume as your destination.” when switching between Bootable and Bootable Mirror operations with the same direction.
• Fixed a bug in the Log Window whereby if you opened a log for a synchronizer document, then closed it while the sync was running (and generating log entries), then re-opened the Log Window, it would not ‘snap’ to the bottom of the log window.
• Fixed a minor problem with Drag & Drop to the Scheduled Documents Manager Window.
• Fixed a minor problem in the Registration Window and license key validation.
• Fixed a problem whereby customers were being prompted for a Keychain Password.
• Fixed a problem in Amazon S3 Cloud Connections whereby it was not properly setting the maximum number of concurrent operations.
• Updated Online Help so terminology is more consistent with terms used in the App.

Full details can be found in the ‘ChronoSync 4.7.0 Enhancements, Tweaks, and Bug Fixes’ tech note.

• Amazon S3 and Google Cloud services support added.
• Added SFTP Server support.
• New disk image mounting options.
• Added Progressive Scanning functionality in the ‘Special File/Folder Handling’ options.
• ‘Smart’ Readiness warnings added so you can either choose to fix or ignore the displayed warnings.
• Support for encrypted volume mounting.
• All-new connection profile architecture.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug that was sometimes causing scheduled syncs to crash at the end of a synchronization.
• Fixed a bug where post-sync tasks including emails, local notifications, push notifications and post-sync scripts were being improperly executed.

ENHANCEMENTS/MISCELLANEOUS:

• Compatible with the latest versions of ChronoAgent (1.6.0) and InterConneX (1.2.1).
• Improved SmartScan performance when connected to a ChronoAgent.
• More efficient “Optimal host routing” logic.
• Enhanced recovery from broken/bad network connections (when connected to ChronoAgent).
• More optimal WAN settings are used when connected to a ChronoAgent over the internet.
• Better handling of file systems that are dynamically changing while being scanned.
• Better compatibility with local iCloud Drive storage.
• The background scheduler now deals with system sleep cycles much better.
• More efficient Analysis Report generation.
• Post sync dismounting or ejection now only occurs if the sync runs through to completion.
• Now tries harder to preserve sync state history after changing connection profiles.
• More efficient display of entries in the Trial Sync Selector window.
• Displays the correct remote machine icon when connected to ChronoAgent v1.6.0 or newer.

BUG FIXES:

• Automatic exclusions at root level of volumes were not working.
• More accurate updating of readiness messages when a target connection state changes and/or failures.
• Any backup that targeted the root level of the boot volume would not reconstruct alias files that get copied.
• Closing a sync document window within 1-2 seconds of sync completion could potentially cause a crash.
• Archive deletion and restore operations did not have their initial log entries bookmarked.
• User/group mapping on a ChronoAgent connection could be temporarily disabled when encountering large folders and updating the the Sync Document UI at the same time.
• The “Saving…” progress indicator at sync completion was not visible on Yosemite & El Capitan systems.
• In rare instances, closing a sync document window while actively editing text in a field could have caused a crash.
• A flaw in the networking logic could have terminated active connections erroneously.
• The Document Organizer was erroneously displaying duplicate entries after performing duplication & rename operations in a certain sequence.
• The Sync Log window could not be opened in the midst of performing a Restore, Delete or Archive Restore operation.
• Eliminated some long stalls that could occur when a large number of files were selected on the Analyze Panel and those files changed state in the file system.
• If opening a bootable backup document that could not connect to either target, it was possible the document would spontaneously change to a ‘regular’ (non-bootable) backup.
• A layout problem with the readiness popover window could clip its content.

Full details can be found in the ‘ChronoSync 4.6.5 Features and Fixes’ tech note.

• Added a ‘Root level only’ alias resolution option.
• Added a ‘Auto-exclude new items’ feature that includes a ‘Root level only’ option. This option excludes any new files or folders from getting backed up or synchronized.
• Added better file not found error handling where the synchronizer document will ignore the error if a refresh confirms the item does not exist on both targets.
• The bootable operation’s roll-back pre-determination setting is now set to ‘Copy.’
• Added the “Allow SmartScan” and “Aggressive Mode” options to the removable media target options sheet.
• Updated online help.
• Fixed several problems with the custom file selector dialog that is presented when selecting a file on a ChronoAgent (local or remote) target.
• Fixed a bug when restoring a file from the archive whereby the test to see if the destination path existed was factoring the package handling setting of the target.
• Fixed a bug whereby archive handling was not being temporarily disabled when restoring a file from the archive.
• Fixed an agent communication bug whereby errors generated when obtaining the results of an asynchronous command that itself did NOT generate an error would not pass up the call chain.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a folder enumeration error occurred on a non-empty, leaf sync node, the sync processing would not flag & respond to the error.
• Fixed an auto-layout bug that could clip the “When deleting files” label.
• Fixed a bug whereby changing targets on a previously run synchronization could result in a crash.
• Fixed a bug whereby folders that have the UAppend, UChg, SAppend or SChg BSD flags set would not have their modification dates preserved.
• Fixed a bug whereby a sync document that was maintaining an archive, but then had archiving disabled, would still factor in the maintenance scan count in the progress reporting.
• Fixed a bug that could misrepresent the “% full” value displayed in a target’s setup pane if the target volume were extremely large.
• Fixed a bug whereby if ChronoSync need to update an alias file after it had been copied, it would not do so using bookmark-style aliases.
• Fixed a problem that occurred when renaming files on certain NAS devices.

• Official El Capitan compatible release!
• Fixes for numerous user-interface glitches and visual artifacts, mostly related to macOS 10.11 El Capitan.
• Fixed some problems with establishing IPv6 network connections.
• Fixed a bug with setting the new El Capitan ‘restricted’ flag on symbolic links.
• Log windows will no longer block when opened for the first time.
• Fixed a bug in the core copy engine whereby the incorrect target was sometimes being reported as the source for certain types of errors.
• Implemented an all-new Trial Mode evaluation system whereby the program can be made fully functional for 15 days.

• A ChronoAgent connection profile can now limit the amount of network bandwidth that a sync operation will consume.
• The ‘Optimal Host Routing’ connection profile option will choose the most efficient network route to a ChronoAgent when multiple routes exist.
• SmartScan will now work for removable media (including DMGs) as long as the media supports it (targets in existing sync documents must be re-specified for it to take effect).
• Added logic to workaround problems caused by some NAS devices that want to generate ‘Parameter Errors’ when creating some files & folders.
• Better multi-threaded performance when aggregating the contents of package files.
• If the background scheduler starts up on a volume other than what it was configured on, it will disable itself and report this action to the user.
• Added logic that reduces the UI’s tendency to want to refresh the Analyze Panel on sync document open/setup, even when the Analyze Panel isn’t visible.
• The Setup Panel now allows for a slightly shorter window.
• The AppleScript ‘Synchronize’ command now waits (up to 30 seconds) for the synchronizer to change status before returning to the caller.
• Better handling of ‘broken’ alias files during a sync.
• Updated online help.
• Fixed a bug where full product activation was impossible if a trial license key was previously entered for “All Users” of the computer.
• Fixed a crashing bug that could occur when multiple synchronizer documents were starting up at exactly the same time.
• Fixed a crashing bug that could occur if auto-exclusions were being removed at the root level of a sync document at precisely the same moment that the file system changed.
• Fixed a bug where the “Only sync if target volumes/agents are available” scheduling option was inadvertently being allowed for Container Sync documents.
• Fixed a crashing bug that could occur when closing document windows on macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) if the corresponding log window was open (or had previously been opened).
• Fixed a bug where the scheduled item suspension constraint (“Abort if still running at…”) could interfere with future manual & scheduled syncs if the associated sync document window was left open when the constraint was reached.
• Fixed a bug where if a scheduled item could not start for some reason, the timestamp that was used for the ‘recent syncs’ entry would be the time of the last run of that item, not the time the failed start occurred.
• Fixed a bug where if the computer was forced to sleep in the midst of issuing a command to a remote ChronoAgent, a hang could potentially occur when the system awoke.
• Fixed a bug where the Analyze Panel’s warning field and connection progress indicator would not always be displayed if a sync document was opened with the Analyze Panel as the initial view.
• Fixed a bug where the automatic login for file sharing targets would not work if the username included spaces and the target was a macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) system.
• Fixed a bug where SMB targets that were macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) systems were not always being properly detected and thus the user received ‘MS-DOS’ filesystem warnings.
• Fixed a bug where when asserting a volume ‘Ignore ownership’ change, sometimes success was reported when in fact it had failed.
• Fixed a bug where the SmartScan logic could trigger unnecessary syncs if what the operating system recognized as package files changed in between syncs (this could happen from installing or removing applications).
• Fixed various typos in the user interface.

• NAS devices that report erroneous file system information no longer cause sync/backup tasks to abort.
• Now posts skipped and excluded files to the log even when verbose logging is disabled.
• Improved progress reporting when copying package files.
• When host names are resolved for an agent connection, it now attempts to choose the most optimal local interface.
• Added the option to probe all routes to a host – and choose the most optimal one – when multiple routes to a remote agent exists.
• Relaxed all internal constraints regarding the maximum length of file paths.
• Updated the list of files and folders that are automatically excluded during a bootable backup operation.
• Added automatic diagnostic reporting when interactively retrying errors.
• Installer now forces the background scheduler to be enabled unless explicitly turned off by the user when using v4.6.2 or newer.
• Fixed a bug that could cause post-sync volume ejection to fail if the Synchronizer Document performing the task is open.
• Fixed a bug in the Delete, Rename and Duplicate functions that could cause crashes when Container Documents are open.
• Fixed a bug that would perform a full copy rather than a merge for files in a package that were HFS-compressed.
• Fixed a bug that would cause lost agent connections when scanning a folder whose files contained an excessively large amount of extended attribute data.
• Fixed a bug that could result in an incomplete package file if an agent connection was dropped while the package was being copied.
• Fixed a couple of problems related to automatic re-registration with the push notification server such as when the initial attempt fails for some reason.
• Fixed some potential crashes when incomplete information regarding folders has been collected from a filesystem.
• Fixed a bad French tooltip in the ‘Scheduler’ preference pane (for the ‘Run scheduled items sequentially’ checkbox).
• Fixed some minor memory leaks.

• Implemented package merging and added the Package Handling setting to the Options Panel under Special File/Folder Handling.
• Implemented enhanced progress reporting statistics showing the elapsed time and a throughput measurement.
• Changed ‘Displayed Name’ rule to ‘Name’ and added a ‘File Name’ selection that makes it SmartScan compatible.
• Optimized retrieving and setting of File Info data.
• Improved efficiency of bootable backup/mirror sync operations.
• Added SmartScan and Package Merging summary settings to the Analysis Report.
• Updated Online Help.
• Fixed a problem where Container Documents would not recognize the contained sync documents had been renamed.
• Fixed a bug where we would fail to display the readiness warning when a rule incompatible with SmartScan was part of a rule group.
• Fixed a bug where changing ownership on a folder could fail.
• Fixed a bug whereby extended attributes on symbolic links were not being preserved.
• Fixed a bug whereby Scheduler push notifications were always being sent even if the user had specified “send only on errors” in Preferences.
• Fixed a bug whereby upgrading from a previous version of CS that was configured to display the ‘Print’ toolbar item would result in the old-style printer icon appearing even under Yosemite.
• Fixed a potential deadlock which could occur when refreshing the displayed contents of the Analyze Panel.
• Fixed a bug whereby extended attributes were being preserved for created directories and alias files even if Preserve Extended Attributes was disabled.
• Fixed a bug in the Analzye panel and Trial Sync selector sheets whereby the extended file/folder info area would sometimes display incorrect Finder Tags values.
• The Trial Sync selector sheet will now display a dimmed “unknown” icon in the table view if a corresponding file system object does not exist.
• When editing a Connection Profile, the wizard’s message about saving your settings now correctly refers to the “OK” button in all languages.
• The contents of the “net”, “dev”, “home”, “Network” and “Volumes” folders at the root level of a volume are now only ignored if one target is the active boot volume.
• Fixed some inefficient logic in the Setup panel that was resulting in much more frequent display updates than necessary.
• Changed how some items are displayed that results in smoother animation on Yosemite.
• Fixed a bug whereby preserving folder modification dates in a modified sync hierarchy could wipe out EAs, ACLs and Finder Comments for SmartScan based syncs.
• Fixed a bug whereby the copy engine would obtain and hold a global thread lock for the duration of any checksum verification that it conducts.
• Fixed a misspelled readiness warning.
• Fixed various auto-layout issues.
• Fixed various minor translation issues.

• SmartScan
• Checksum Data Verification
• Modernized Memory Management
• New Scheduling Options
• Push Notifications
• Local Volume Options
• Log Bookmarks
• Improved Tags Support
• Document Notes
• Yosemite Native UI
• Accessibility
• Document Info Popover
• More Info Popovers
• Readiness Info Popovers
• Animated System Menu
• Over 50 features, enhancements and bug fixes!

• Improved UI display and performance under Yosemite.
• Improved Package File analysis logic.
• Improved fault tolerance by accounting for potentially corrupt initialization values.
• Improved application security and stability.
• Added logic to work-around deficiencies when communicating with certain network file systems.
• Increased the file count limit for Demo mode.
• Updated the bootable backup blacklist of files and folders not copied.
• Fixed a hang that could occur on document open.

• Fixes a bug that could cause excessive resource consumption when a Daylight Savings Time transition occurs in some geographic regions.
• Minor interface fixes.

• The ChronoSync system menu now displays Yosemite compatible icons.
• Migrated away from several Yosemite deprecated APIs.
• There’s now a much shorter delay presenting results when performing a Trial Sync if a large number of files do not exist on one side of the sync.
• ChronoSync now automatically asserts a volume’s ‘Ignore Ownership’ state to OFF when performing a bootable backup.
• Update checks are now performed via a secure connection.
• Default preference settings have been changed.
  • Most notably, “Show Document Organizer on Launch” is ON and “Automatically Show Document Organizer” is OFF.
  • We also don’t post scheduler notifications by default anymore.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue in the Trial Sync selector sheet that could prevent the proper display of icons in the File/Folder information pane.
• Fixed some animation glitches on 10.9+ systems.
• Fixed a bug with the Preference pane responding to preference changes in other portions of the program.
• Fixed a bug in the ChronoSync Backgrounder that could lead to an incomplete entry being added to the “Recent Scheduled Syncs” submenu.
• Fixed a bug that could interfere with the initial Document Organizer display and the auto-update check on launch.
• Fixed a bug that would not correctly detect changes to a directory that was being enumerated if the change occurred at the very end of enumeration.
• Fixed various issue that could prevent enabling the “Local Volumes (Admin Access)” option on mis-configured systems.
• Fixed a bug whereby certain types of readiness test failures that should prevent a scheduled sync from occurring would not prevent the sync.
• The Installer will no longer report that ChronoSync is running and must be terminated if the ChronoSync Express Scheduler happens to be running.

• The synchronizer and container document Rename, Delete, and Duplicate now produce more meaningful error messages if those operations fail.
• Fixed a bug whereby the “Duplicate” function was not properly duplicating container documents. Several items of metadata were not properly preserved.
• Fixed a bug whereby the Document Organizer could fail to display on launch under certain scenarios.
• Fixed a bug that would not re-display the Document Organizer if you opened a document that required a password to access and clicked “Cancel” from the prompt.
• Fixed a bug that would not re-display the Document Organizer if you opened a document and received the “Document in Use” error message.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash if a newly created synchronizer or container document were closed before it was fully displayed.
• Implemented a custom configuration option (via plist settings) to return to creating “Untitled” synchronizer documents on application launch & activation.
• Fixed an animation glitch that occurred when switching to bootable, local agent connection in a single step.
• Fixed some bugs that could cause a hang or crash when selecting targets.
• Fixed a cosmetic glitch whereby the deletion and readiness boxes were not animating properly on 10.9+.
• Fixed a cosmetic glitch whereby the background of the detailed readiness message text view was being displayed in a subtle shade of grey.
• Fixed a bug whereby bootable options for remote agents would be disabled if connection to the local agent could not be established for some reason.
• Fixed a bug whereby collapsing a multi-level branch of files in the Analyze or Archive panel could result in the user interface for that document becoming unresponsive.
• Fixed a bug whereby user and group names on a remote agent connection were not being properly displayed in the Analyze panel.
• Fixed a bug whereby the “Last Synchronized” column in the Analyze panel was not updating in real time and could continue to show an erroneous value until a refresh was forced.
• Fixed a bug whereby extended timeout values for local agent connects were not being established on initial connection attempts.
• Implemented more efficient collection of file metadata such as as extended attributes and ACLs.
• Fixed a bug whereby changes to a file’s extended attributes were not always correctly detected when the EA sync trigger was enabled.
• The file synchronization engine will now only force copying new files to a temporary file name on file server connections.
• Added better fall-back logic for situations where some file systems produce errors when certain file access permissions are requested.
• Fixed a bug in the “Verify Data” function that was not properly bypassing device caches.
• The file copying logic now iterates file forks more efficiently.
• Added the option to control file copying cache behavior via plist settings.
• Eliminated some inefficiencies in the copy engine that were carry-overs from very early versions of the application.
• Updated the volume blacklist for bootable targets and auto-exclusion.
• Fixed some bugs in the diagnostic auditing mechanism.
• Changed the terminology displayed in the user interface when selecting a custom location for the “Synchronizer Documents” folder.
• Added workaround logic that should prevent various progress sheet windows from failing to show progress on certain systems.
• Added logic to prevent accidental deletion of files when running the installer on 10.6 systems after a very specific (and obscure) sequence of events.

• Fixed a bug where User/Group Mapping was being incorrectly applied when syncing to a ChronoAgent connection. If you sync to a ChronoAgent connection and perform user/group mapping, please contact support to learn more details on how this problem may affect you and get assistance in resolving any User/Group mapping issues that may have occurred.

• 64 bit application. ChronoSync now runs as a 64 bit application allowing access to much more memory and the use of more advanced APIs and system technologies.
• Built against the 10.9 SDK. ChronoSync now takes advantage of the latest OS technologies while maintaining compatibility back to 10.6!
• Document Organizer. The Document Organizer keeps track of all recently used documents and presents them in a convenient-to-use window.
• New Document Behaviors. The “File” menu contains Rename, Duplicate and Delete items that can be performed on open sync documents. Deletion of documents containing an archive now optionally includes purging the archive files.
• New Document I/O. ChronoSync 4.5 loads and saves synchronizer documents up to 2-3x faster than previous versions.
• Notification Center Integration. The “Post message via Notification Center” option has been added for synchronizer and container documents as well as scheduler notifications.
• Communication Settings on Connection Profiles. The connection profile editor now contains ‘Advanced’ settings to control timeouts on a per-connection basis and includes the “Accessed on WAN” setting to optimize for lower-speed and/or high latency connections.
• Bootable Mirror. The bootable mirror sync operation is now available.
• More Efficient Data Encoding. Communication during Admin Access for bootable backups, or with a remote ChronoAgent is now encoded in a more efficient format that results in up to a 15-20% increase in synchronizer scan performance.
• Global Registration. An option to register the program for all users of the computer has been added.
• Retina Artwork. Virtually all icons and supplemental artwork in the program has been optimized for high resolution (Retina) displays.
• Enhanced Error Reporting. More specific reporting the source of errors during a synchronization as well as error resolution suggestions.
• Additional Scheduling Options. The ‘Retry on Error’ setting for scheduled items now provides user control over the interval between retries and the maximum number of retries to attempt before giving up.
• Automatic Forbidden Folder Exclusion. System-specific folders that should not be a part of a typical synchronization/backup scenario are now automatically excluded.
• Bug Fixes, Miscellaneous Tweaks & Enhancements. Over 100 other enhancements, tweaks and bug fixes have been made throughout the entire program to improve the general functionality and “feel”.

• Fixed a crash when certain types of email servers are configured.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when collecting information on all mounted volumes.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when copying data to an InterConneX sharespace.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when closing sync documents after manually running a sync.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when posting information to a sync document’s log.
• Fixed a hang that could occur when refreshing the contents of the Analyze Panel in response to a file system change.
• Fixed a problem where incorrect permissions could be applied to read-only, locked files that are safe-copied.
• Added logic to ensure the Setup Panel refreshes and displays updated Readiness Messages when invoking a sync.
• Modified the installer to ensure that all previously installed components are correctly replaced when updating the app.

• Implemented a fix for a bug in Mavericks that would cause a folder scan to fail with a fatal error if the folder did not have read permissions.
• Implemented a fix for a bug in Mavericks that would cause the application to crash when processing temporary files with a leading tilde character in their name.
• Fixed a bug that could cause unnecessary package aggregation if a folder containing packages had its contents change while it was being scanned.
• Fixed a bug that could result in a “File Not Found” error when restoring from a ZIP compressed file in a target’s archive.
• Fixed a bug that would not generate proper errors when an attempt to create a unique filename in a folder failed.
• Eliminated some unnecessary archive related data that was being stored in saved synchronizer documents.
• Fixed a bug that could cause errors when moving files to a target’s archive.
• Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect version numbers to be assigned to files in a target’s archive.
• Fixed several bugs that could cause the application to crash when trying to report to the user that an exception occurred.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the application to crash when posting entries to a synchronizer’s log.
• Fixed an erroneous tooltip in the progress sheet user interface.
• Implemented more efficient unicode filename handling.

• Fixed several bugs that could result in crashes.
• Fixed a bug where a sync scheduled to run when *both* target volumes mount would fail to detect second volume mounting.
• Fixed a problem where a partially copied file could be left in-place if a connection was lost during the copy.
• Fixed several problems that occur when adding files and folders to the Archive.
• Changed behavior of how folders (and their permissions) are created in the archive for users who may not have authorization to create/restore folders with specific permissions settings.
• Fixed a problem where enabling Archiving while syncing to an InterConneX sharespace would generate errors.
• Fixed a problem that resulted in -43 error codes being returned on .DS_Store files synced to an InterConneX sharespace.
• Eliminated a very long timeout that can appear to be a hang when closing sync documents.
• Implemented 10 second timeout for mounted volume detection to resolve long sync document hangs.
• Improved sync scan performance especially when Package Files are included in the sync tree.
• Improved sync performance, improved user interface responsiveness and reduced the possibility of deadlocks.
• Improved logic that controls the refresh of the Analyze Panel resulting in improved refresh performance.
• Improved performance when aborting a sync.
• Added logic so that when a sync document is invoked via the ‘Synchronize’ button and it needs to mount a server for either target, the mount operation will invoke a user interface if necessary.
• Added logic to ensure update checks occur even if ChronoSync is left running for very long times. Previously, update checks only occurred upon startup.
• Added logic that takes into account all ACLs when modifying file and folder permissions to copy, move, and rename files and folders.
• Implemented installer changes to properly install on the system startup volume.

• Fixed a problem where ChronoSync and/or ChronoSyncBackgrounder were using unusually high CPU resources when idle.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a remote connection profile was specified for a target and then changed, a disconnect would not be performed from the previously selected agent.
• Fixed a bug whereby if a remote connection profile was specified for a target and then changed followed by an UNDO, the connection profile would be restored but a reconnect would not be attempted.
• Fixed a problem that could result in a crash when closing a sync document.
• Fixed a problem that could result in a crash when losing and/or regaining a connection with a target.
• Fixed a problem with Container documents that could result in a crash.
• Eliminated a potential hang by reworking some thread protections.
• Fixed a bug whereby it was possible to create a monthly/weekly/daily scheduled item that had ’empty’ values for the day-of-month, day-of-week, hour and/or minute intervals.
• Fixed a bug in the Log Window Options whereby the field for a custom log file path would not update it’s tooltip after the user specified a new path.
• Enhanced compatibility with InterConneX.
• Enhanced AppleScript support.
• Enhanced error reporting to more accurately explain what is happening when certain error occur.
• Eliminated some benign console messages generated at startup.

• Reworked the Sync Document and Scheduler logs to provide categorized entries and allow filtering for All, Errors only, and Notices only.
• Completely reworked the Analyze Panel outline view. Gathering of file and folder information for display (such as when expanding folders) now happens in the background so the application is not blocked. UI updates have been automated. These behaviors also occur when communicating with ChronoAgent (1.4.0 or newer) and InterConneX targets.
• Added support to create Connection Profiles that connect to InterConneX Sharespaces so they can now be used as sync targets.
• Added an auto-reconnect feature for ChronoAgent connections. If the connection drops during sync, an attempt is made to reconnect. If successful, the sync resumes where it left off.
• Added support for data compression over ChronoAgent and InterConneX connections.
• ChronoAgent and InterConneX connections (and ChronoAgent re-connections) are now performed in the background so the application is no longer blocked waiting for a connection to be established.
• Added details to the Connection Profiles Preference pane to easily differentiate between InterConneX and ChronoAgent Connection Profiles.
• Replaced the underlying e-mail engine so e-mail notifications sent via Direct Messaging can now be sent to a wider variety of mail servers using secure connections.
• Improved scheduled sync dispatch including numerous bug fixes.
• Fixed a bug that would result in Analyze Panel icons being displayed upside down in 10.7 and newer versions of macOS.
• Added Fast Maintenance that significantly reduces time spent during the maintenance phase.
• Implemented concurrent target directory file system information collection during the analysis phase of synchronization that will improve the speed of the analysis phase.
• Improved the custom file path selector for agent connections as it now remembers the last path browsed on a per-target basis.
• Optimized copy operations that results in better performance when syncing large files.
• Updated target scanning logic.
• Reworked and updated low-level network communications.
• Eliminated redundant classes that previously generated console warnings.
• Eliminated the use of APIs deprecated in macOS 10.6.
• Various low-level optimizations and improvements to increase sync performance.

• Modified the logic that tests to confirm an SMB volume is still mounted to improve compatibility with certain NAS devices.
• The auto-update check interval has been reduced from 3 days to 1 day.

• Added the capability to specify a login domain when entering a username in network volume Target Options.
• Added logic to overcome the situation where the OS would not immediately detect that a mounted SMB volume had become disconnected.
• Changed the way we collect file and folder information from NAS volumes to prevent overloading and hanging certain NAS devices.
• Fixed a problem where scheduled syncs would stop running after a missed scheduled sync.
• Fixed a problem where ChronoSync was not ignoring mounted local and network volumes when scanning the local file system.
• Fixed a problem with sending notification emails when aborting a sync that could have resulted in a hang.
• Fixed a minor problem with date conversion when no date is specified.
• Fixed a problem where the installer was attempting to reference an object that was already disposed of.

• Now supplies more information to remote ChronoAgents to make monitoring tools, such as ChronoMonitor, more useful.
• Potential fix to a crash caused when agents leave or join the network just before the sync document has finished disposing itself.
• Fix for bug where items on a server are set to be moved to Trash instead of the archive after modifying the sync document’s target from a local target to a file server.
• Fixed a bug in the Connection Profile editor that would not allow a port value larger than 56535 to be specified.

• Fixed a problem in the Scheduled Documents Manager window where a scheduled Container Document item would stop responding when the sync was run with the Container Document window open.
• Added logic to prevent triggering a false “File Not Found” error in pre-1.3.6 agents.
• Added logic to help users automatically disable “Preserve Extended Attributes” when syncing to file server.
• Added logic to automatically disable “Preserve Access Control Lists” when connecting to any target that doesn’t support them.
• Fixed a bug in the Log that raised an exception when clicking a group of selected lines.