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Syncing is stuck on my Linux devices, what can I do?
It seems I have the same problem as mentioned in above posts. I am running Dropbox on a pc and laptop, both having Linux-Lubuntu as the os. After a "one time update" on both systems, Dropbox is stuck indexing/uploading/downloading a small number of files. In addition, I noticed that when I rename a file on my hard disk, the name of that file is not always changed in the cloud. I tried the two fix options and did a complete reinstall of the dropbox client, but no success. I would appreciate any help.
Hi holf,
At the beginning you can try fix possible permission errors:
sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox" sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox" chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox
Also, existing symbolic links could be found using:
ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "
If no any change, check the needs for watchable entries:
i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i
The above will give you some estimation. The current upper border could be received using:
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
If the estimation above don't fit in last result, try extend the border using something like:
sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000
Tune the value according your needs (with some reserve, of course).
If nothing helps yet, try to find out the exact files making troubles (which will give you chance investigate further), using something like:
(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"
Last command assume you have installed properly 'dropbox' command, either using debian package or by hand. Otherwise "command not found" will be signaled. Will be enumerated all folders in Dropbox and signaled problematic files inside, if any. Be patient, could take some time, depending on your content size. Once found out problematic entries, you can use different techniques for investigate, like see current file's classic attributes (the simplest one):
ls -l ~/Dropbox/Troublesome/file.ext
Good luck. :wink:
53 Replies
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- Daphne
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi there holf, thanks for reaching out to us here on the Community!
I've moved your post to it's own thread as you're currently using a different OS (Linux rather than Windows) to those on the thread you originally posted in here.
I'd love to troubleshoot with you and keep this separate to avoid any confusion.
Since you've already tried a few steps, could you let me know if you currently have any symlinks within your Dropbox folder? You can use the steps here in point 7 to check.
If you are, could you try moving them outside the Dropbox folder or replacing them with the actual file to see if that helps syncing to progress?
Let me know what you find and we'll go from there!
Thank you. I will try out your suggestions and have a look at the other thread.
Hi holf,
At the beginning you can try fix possible permission errors:
sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox" sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox" chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox
Also, existing symbolic links could be found using:
ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "
If no any change, check the needs for watchable entries:
i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i
The above will give you some estimation. The current upper border could be received using:
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
If the estimation above don't fit in last result, try extend the border using something like:
sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000
Tune the value according your needs (with some reserve, of course).
If nothing helps yet, try to find out the exact files making troubles (which will give you chance investigate further), using something like:
(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"
Last command assume you have installed properly 'dropbox' command, either using debian package or by hand. Otherwise "command not found" will be signaled. Will be enumerated all folders in Dropbox and signaled problematic files inside, if any. Be patient, could take some time, depending on your content size. Once found out problematic entries, you can use different techniques for investigate, like see current file's classic attributes (the simplest one):
ls -l ~/Dropbox/Troublesome/file.ext
Good luck. :wink:
- Walter
Thanks for reporting this Здравко!
As Daphne just got out of the office, I went ahead and fished your comment out of the Community's spam folder.
As mentioned in the past, this was probably caught due ot its lenght and/or for containing code blocks and commands.
In any case, I hope this help and see you around the Community!
holf: I hope Здравко's suggestions help with the issue you've reported so please keep us posted on your findings!
Hi
- Hi,I was having a similar problem and the Здравко's solutions worked temporarily for me. When I restarted my computer the problem started again.While I was waiting for a proper solution by Dropbox support, I've been studying the Здравко's solutions and I found out the command below is the one which worked temporarily:sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000Then, I found out more information about this fs.inotify.max_user_watches property at the following address:According to the instructions in the page, the above command, in fact, sets the property temporarily. In order to get it permanently, the commands would be:
sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000
sudo sysctl -pI tried them and Dropbox is working fine on my computer until now. Even if I restarted it.In summary, the problem is solved, but I'm really curious to know what exactly is this property and why Dropbox was not working fine until I set it with a higher number. Could someone explain to me?Anyway, thank you very much for all attention and assistance.Kind regards,Draylson OMG you are a legend, in my case what solved was raising that "max_user_watches" limit.
I also managed to make it persistent using draylson's instructions.I was struggling with this problem for ages, thank you very much!
I've suffered same issue, when I upgraded my Ubuntu to latest version few days ago. Changing max_user_watches solved problem. Thanks guys.
Same here - the max_user_watches setting on my Linux Mint was 8192 "out of the box", I have 128k files on Dropbox - a bit of a mismatch. Set it to 250,000 for now and Dropbox resumed syncing.
