files missing in synced folders on Linux, but not online or on Windows

Hi sleepysloth,

Some more information would be helpful. Can you provide additional information about currently running application and environment? Post the following commands results (executed one by one):

dropbox version
dropbox status
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

How many files/folders reside in your Dropbox folder? As an alternative, you can post the result of following command:

db_path=`jq -r '.personal.path' ~/.dropbox/info.json`; echo -n "Your Dropbox folder $db_path entries approximate count is "; tree -a "$db_path" | wc -l

You may need install 'jq' and/or 'tree' if some of them are missing on your system.

Let's hope the above results will clarify what's going on. 🤔

For the first one, my results were: 

dropbox version
Dropbox daemon version: 112.4.321
Dropbox command-line interface version: 2020.03.04

dropbox status
Up to date

sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 65536

For the last one, I did have to install jq and tree but after that I got confused. I couldn't figure out where my .dropbox directory should be. My Dropbox folder is in /mnt/sdc1. I found a .dropbox in there, but when I tried ~/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox/.dropbox/info.json, like so

db_path=`jq -r '.personal.path' ~/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox/.dropbox/info.json`; echo -n "Your Dropbox folder $db_path entries approximate count is "; tree -a "$db_path" | wc -l

jq gave a "No such file or directory" error. I also tried ~/.dropbox/info.json and ~/mnt/sdc1/.dropbox/info.json and got the same results. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to change another part of the command? 

I don't know if this is the same info you're looking for but I do know that there are over 200,000 files and folders in my Dropbox. I sync the whole 800GB of it on Linux because I have the space (the sdc1 partition is 6TB) and I like to have all my files somewhere other than the cloud. 

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sleepysloth wrote:

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sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 65536

 

For the last one, I did have to install jq and tree but after that I got confused. I couldn't figure out where my .dropbox directory should be. My Dropbox folder is in /mnt/sdc1. I found a .dropbox in there, but when I tried ~/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox/.dropbox/info.json, like so

db_path=`jq -r '.personal.path' ~/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox/.dropbox/info.json`; echo -n "Your Dropbox folder $db_path entries approximate count is "; tree -a "$db_path" | wc -l

jq gave a "No such file or directory" error. I also tried ~/.dropbox/info.json and ~/mnt/sdc1/.dropbox/info.json and got the same results. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to change another part of the command? 

 

I don't know if this is the same info you're looking for but I do know that there are over 200,000 files and folders in my Dropbox. I sync the whole 800GB of it on Linux because I have the space (the sdc1 partition is 6TB) and I like to have all my files somewhere other than the cloud. 

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Hi sleepysloth,

I haven't mentioned that you need to change anything in the command and you should avoid such change! ☝️Just copy/paste it. 😉 That's it.

The number of files/folders in your account should be less than maximum number of watches allowed. Since in your case that isn't true ( 65536 < 200000 ), you have to change this system setting. Figure out exact number of files and folders in your Dropbox folder (together), so be able decide exact value for fs.inotify.max_user_watches update (with some reserve of course).

PS: Take a look here, so we can avoid repeat something already discussed.

Hope this gives right direction.

Hmm, I tried that first and I thought I got the same error, which is why I tried the others, but now when I try it I get it says it can't open the file, permission denied. 

However I followed the instructions on the other page, made the watchable entries number 300,000, and now my Dropbox is syncing. I'm pretty sure that worked. The folders that I noticed had files missing are all updating. I'll double-check when it's done. Thank you! 

Darn. Didn't work! Dropbox spent awhile indexing all the files, then syncing, and after it finished the missing files still weren't there. I restarted and it started syncing again, but now it's finished and the missing files are still gone. 

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sleepysloth wrote:

Hmm, I tried that first and I thought I got the same error, which is why I tried the others, but now when I try it I get it says it can't open the file, permission denied. 

...

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🤔 That's not possible. Are you sure the command gets launched exactly as I have posted it - without any changes? Post the "error" you have received together with the command executed exactly as appear in terminal.

This is what I get when I enter that command: 

Hi sleepysloth,

I have no idea what exactly you have done in your account, but this isn't resulted by Dropbox application (if everything used correctly). Have you changed permissions in your account (intentionally or not) or some configuration changes? This could be a result of some sophisticated games with the system, without actually aware what exactly you are doing.

Ok, let see what is the actual state (what you have done - we assume unintentionally). What's the result of following commands:

id
ls -ld ~/.dropbox*

I have some guesses as to what the reason is. Try following commands:

sudo chown -R naomi ~/.dropbox*
chmod -R u+rw ~/.dropbox*

Post the results coming from first code block and if there is some error message coming from second code block. 🤔 Based on results we will step up further.

Here's the results of the first two: 

uid=1000(naomi) gid=1000(naomi) groups=1000(naomi),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),120(lpadmin),131(lxd),132(sambashare),998(nordvpn)

drwx------ 8 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 23 14:11 /home/naomi/.dropbox
drwxrwxr-x 3 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 13 18:26 /home/naomi/.dropbox-dist

And I didn't get any errors from the second. 

Ok, seems you have proper access rights on the folders (including configuration one). Let see what about the configuration content. Post the following command result:

ls -al ~/.dropbox

What outs the following command too:

cat ~/.dropbox/info.json; echo

🤔