I am using Dropbox to synchronize some MAMP mysql databases via a symlink as per this tutorial. They are synced between my laptop and desktop.
For quite some time, everything has worked perfectly. I haven’t changed anything and all of a sudden I’ve noticed the db’s are out of sync. For example, in a wordpress database, I have made several changes that aren’t reflected on the other computer, even after Dropbox has plenty of time to ‘sync’ up, and Mamp is running on only one system and quit before opening on the other.
Running
Tools > Check MySQL Databases
Shows every relevant db/table to be ‘OK’
Both computers are symlinked to the same folder, so I’m really not sure what is going on here. I’m really unsure how to trouble shoot this as even the dropbox revision/file history shows no conflicts or anything. It’s as though the data is being stored somewhere else even though both are linked to the same place.
To remedy, I’ve had to make a mysqldump from one system and reimport it to the other, but this defeats the purpose.
If anyone has a tip for how to begin troubleshooting this, I’d greatly appreciate it.
There’s a fundamental difference between what you’re doing and what the article recommended. The article was using dropbox as a one-way sync. So only running MySQL server on one server, then using Dropbox to store a remote copy of the database in “The Cloud.”
In your case, it sounds like you’re trying to synchronize two running MySQL Servers using Dropbox. MySQL isn’t designed to work this way. There’s a whole (complex) feature for this purpose called replication. I’d strongly discourage you from using Dropbox to sync a database which has MySQL servers running on more than one machine.
Regarding the failure to sync, it sounds like a Dropbox issue. Do you have sufficient space left? You may need to contact their support to see why your symlinks aren’t syncing properly.