Obsidian looses installed plugins on Linux (Ubuntu)

Help
1
  • obsidian 1.8.9 on a ubuntu 24.10 installation.
  • several vaults
  • install community-plugins (tasks, and homepage), activate the plugins, use them, all fine.
  • close the computer / reboot
  • all plugins gone, i did not notice any other change to the vault or settings, just the plugins are gone.
  • I had tried to find the issue, but can’t see anything wrong, or no idea how to further debug. All of the vaults have the same plugins installed, so there is no difference, e.g. that one vault’s use overwrites another one’s settings or so.

Any idea what the issue is, and how to further debug?
This issue is for at least a year now since i use obsidian.

Thanks for any hint.

2

I think this is a problem specific to your system. Perhaps you have some permission issues on on the location where you place your vaults.

1 Like
3

hi, no issue with permissions.

I found out the following:
.obsidian/plugins folder contains a subfolder for each plugin, which in turn contains 4 config files per plugin - see screenshot

image
image955×1156 136 KB

Strangely the config files disappear, i.e. the folders are still there, but empty.
Who / how / why are the config files deleted?
How can I find out who / what deletes them?

I am using syncthing to syncronise data between notebook and android. Will test if this may be the issue where the config files get lost.

4

The issue is found out on my system by chance as follows:

I use syncthing to mirror my ubuntu computer to an android phone. And this is where somehow the plugin-folder’s contents were lost / deleted. I have no clue why this happens as i did not modify or even use obsidian on the android installation (which would possibly delete the plugin files for any odd reason of another dimension).

After exluding the .obsidian/plugin folders from syncronization these keep on remaining as should and all vault’s plugins work well.

Topic closed - I need to investigate further what happens on syncthing …

5

I typically exclude the entirety of .obsidian, but prioritize first to allow snippets for CSS. I do this like so in syncthing in the ignore patterns section (the order is important):
!snippets
.obsidian

Also, it is worthwhile to change the following:

Fix sync conflicts

  • On all devices, open the Syncthing web UI
  • Go to Actions → Advanced → Folder → Select your Obsidian folder → Max Conflicts → Set to 0
  • Repeat for each device

This will make Syncthing just keep the latest copy (which from what I’ve seen is always the correct copy)