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/files/save_url has high rate of failure
Hi, I am currently testing using the /files/save_url API endpoint and am experiencing a high rate of failure. I am testing using a set of 6 small image files stored in S3-compatible storage environments, and using their public URLs with the aforementioned API endpoint. In every test run, there is at least one file that fails to be created in Dropbox, and it is a different file from the set each time. A file that fails in test #1 will succeed in tests #2, #3 and fail again in test #4 etc. These image files are standard .jpg files and generally 500kb or less.
Upon checking the status of the API requests using /files/save_url/check_job_status, the failed IDs return the "download_failed" response. I know there is a 5 minute limit on file transfers using /files/save_url, however all these failed IDs are returning their failure response only a few seconds after initiating the API request.
It may be worth mentioning that the API requests to /files/save_url are occurring all together. I don't believe the URLs are being rate-limited on the S3-compatible storage side, as it is tested with multiple environments, including self-hosted storage without such restrictions.
Done some googling, found some users with the same issue, but unable to find anything that resolves the issue.
Some example failed job IDs:
nJekCKfZPnwAAAAAAAAAAQ
aPQH1k_ei7cAAAAAAAAAAQ
Is there a way to resolve this issue?
14 Replies
- DB-Des
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi nyou045
Apologies, I looked into this deeper and found that your samples were not explicit rate limiting, but were actually hitting the same internal constraint as discussed earlier in this thread. This is still open with the team and I'll follow up with any updates.
My colleague has just sent me an email asking me to copy 3.8TB from an AWS S3 bucket into his Dropbox team folder. Some of the files in the bucket are 1.7GB. At ~1MB/s, these files will take ~29 minutes to save. Which is greater than the 15 minute timeout. Can this 15 minute timeout please be increased?
As predicted:
FAILED after 952s https://quadrant-universityofauckland.s3.amazonaws.com/delivery/year%3D2025/month%3D07/day%3D06/000004_0_c8601ccb-23fe-4e2d-8e3c-043e13aa37b4_20260203_185011_00313_7w84i.gz?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAZDICVH6VPNMUQAXQ&Signature=49QsO2MiZxeObXnnsibD6cq94qY%3D&Expires=1770581161 2147247536 bytes SaveUrlResult('async_job_id', 'IBewBfjP7IIAAAAAAAAAAQ')
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