Obsidian sync fails for medium-size PDFs on Boox devices

Hi,

Disclaimer: I’ve had long conversations with Obsidian sync’s support team who did not manage to solve this issue and asked me to post a bug report on this forum.

Problem: Obsidian sync fails to download PDFs larger than 3-4MB to my Onyx Boox Note Air 3 C device. The download starts and is reported as successful by the sync log, but the PDF materializes as an empty 1.05MB file on my device. As a comparison, it works on my iphone and ipad, so it seems to be an android-related issue, specifically on boox devices.

Minimal reproducing test:

  1. state of my linux vault (left), iOS iPad vault (center) and android Boox vault (right) before adding PDFs to the ‘cooking’ folder:

  2. Here are the sync logs after adding 3 PDFs to the ‘cuisine’ directory on the linux vault (iOS left, android right):


  3. And finally here is the state of the PDF files on the iOS iPad (left) and android boox (right) filesystems:


As you can see, the small 1.2MB PDF synced properly, but both the 8.2MB and the 57.7MB PDFs did not get downloaded properly.

Here is the device metadata:

SYSTEM INFO:

Operating system: android 12 (QUALCOMM NoteAir3C)
Obsidian version: 1.4.16 (114)
API version: v1.4.16
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: none

SYNC INFO:

Vault ID: (XXXX)
Host server: wss://sync-10.obsidian.md
Device name:
Allowed file types: image, pdf, video, audio, unsupported
Allowed special types: app, core-plugin, core-plugin-data
Ignored directories:
Prevent sleep: true

Thank you for your assistance!

Hello.

I wonder if the transfer crashes/goes out of memory without producing an error.

What’s the android webview version installed and can you update it?

Hey, I have that exact same problem (on the boox note air 3). Do you have any update / could you give me a link to the bug request?
@WhiteNoise if I can try anything to assist I’m happy to help. My air 3 usually has about 2gb of free ram. I do not see a webvIew version anywhere, I don’t see the Android System Webview app like on my phone.

Edit: Nevermind the link to the bug request, stupid me didn’t notice we were in it already.

Hi, I run into the same issue and it is really confusing… may I ask what is the link of the bug request you mention? thanks!

I saw this but not sure whose responsibility is this
https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/17dr81x/autosync_cant_download_larger_files_20mb_on_note/

I don’t know now which bug request you are referring to. This thread is the bug report for Obsidian.

I’m struggling with 8mb and even 2mb. This is really weird though.

As I said before, if I can provide the Obsidian team with any info I’m happy to help!

Edit: I just tried syncing from the tablet to my pc, and it works fine in that direction. The problem is only syncing from another device to my tablet.