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carpii's avatar
carpii
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago

1password often ends up with multiple instances running (each with its own trayicon)

I regularly launch the 1password standalone app (using rofi as my launcher). and I also use the Chrome extension too.

Over time I often notice that there are several instances of 1Password running, each one with its own trayicon.
Usually 2 when I notice, but I've also seen 3 on one occasion
These are independant processes, since I can quit one via the tray and it doesn't affect the others, and ps confirms this too.
I have 1Pass settings to 'minimize to tray' instead of quitting.

I haven't yet figured out what causes more than one to appear.
Anyone else seeing this problem? I don't know enough about linux yet to say it's a 1Password problem, or some config issue with my environment/desktop etc.

Can you shed any light on how exactly 1Password decides if there is already an existing instance?
Maybe that will help troubleshoot it

Thanks

1Password Version: 8.6.1
Extension Version: 2.3.2
OS Version: Arch Linux / Latest google-chrome-stable

linux

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  • carpii's avatar
    carpii
    Occasional Contributor
    4 years ago

    The semaphore files in ~/.config/1Password/Singleton* files are all symlinks

    `
    [carpii@beep:~/.config/1Password]$ ls -lhaG Singleton* | cut -d" " -f8,9,10

    SingletonCookie -> 12251614063955870704
    SingletonLock -> beep-3492226
    SingletonSocket -> /tmp/scoped_dir1GPzpI/SingletonSocket
    `

    The SingletonSocket symlink does point to a valid /tmp file

    But SingletonCookie and SingletonLock point to files in the same directory, which do not exist (ie, they are broken symlinks).

    Could this be the cause of it?

  • carpii's avatar
    carpii
    Occasional Contributor
    4 years ago

    Hi @Savanni - thanks for the reply.

    I'm using arch linux, and only have a single 1password binary (as far as I can tell anyway).
    This was done via the AUR package - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/1password

    I have however also installed 1password-cli from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/1password-cli
    I'm not sure this should be an issue though, these are just a bunch of scripts and the package does not bundle a conflicting 1password app binary

    Tonight I noticed two 1password systray icons again. One had a lock overlay indicating it needed a password to unlock (confirmed by trying to open it), and the other was already unlocked.
    Not sure what this means exactly, but I assume it demonstrates it's not a systray issue where it's displaying multiple icons for the same underlying process.

    I'll see if I can add some inotify to the semaphore files you mention, hopefully that will give some insight into what might be going wrong, or perhaps alert me when a 2nd instance is spawned so I can see a pattern developing

  • Former Member's avatar
    Former Member
    4 years ago

    What I've seen before is a bug where if you toggle "keep in system tray" a couple of times, you can create an infinite number of 1Password icons.

    I haven't really seen cases in which I have multiple copies of 1Password running (except, of course, when I'm running dev builds). What I do tend to see is a lot of different processes running with a single instance of 1Password. However, what you describe really sounds like multiple independent copies of 1Password.

    Our mechanism is built in to Electron, which creates a trio of links in ~/.config/1Password. SingletonCookie and SingletonLock both point to identifiers, not actual files. SingletonSocket points to a socket that should be in your /tmp folder and serves as the communication mechanism for sending CLI parameters to the running desktop app. We haven't done very much with this as its always seemed reliable.

    How have you installed 1Password? Is it possible, however far-fetched, that you have more than one copy installed?