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

Thank you for bearing with me with during this process, I really appreciate it! 

The output for the first one: 

total 48
drwx------ 8 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 27 10:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 26 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 30 10:57 ..
srw------- 1 naomi naomi 0 Jan 27 10:09 command_socket
-rw-rw-r-- 1 naomi naomi 4 Jan 27 10:09 dropbox.pid
drwx------ 2 naomi naomi 4096 Dec 29 19:34 events
-rw-rw-r-- 1 naomi naomi 65 Jan 27 10:12 host.db
srw------- 1 naomi naomi 0 Jan 27 10:09 iface_socket
-rw-rw-r-- 1 naomi naomi 110 Jan 27 10:12 info.json
drwx------ 3 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 30 13:18 instance1
drwx------ 2 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 27 10:12 instance_db
drwxrwxr-x 5 naomi naomi 4096 Dec 29 19:34 logs
drwxrwxr-x 2 naomi naomi 4096 Dec 29 19:34 machine_storage
drwxrwxr-x 2 naomi naomi 4096 Dec 29 19:36 metrics
-rw-rw-r-- 1 naomi naomi 248 Dec 29 19:34 unlink.db

And for the second: 

{"personal": {"path": "/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox", "host": 68330243136, "is_team": false, "subscription_type": "Pro"}}

Hi sleepysloth,

It's really strange! 🤔 There are contradictions in your information. Seems, you have full access, but you're receiving "Permission denied". I have to confess, don't have any explanation to that.

Anyway... We can check a little twisted version. What's the result of the following command:

echo -n "Your Dropbox folder /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox entries approximate count is "; tree -a "/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox" | wc -l; sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches; echo -n "Current status is "; dropbox status; stat -f /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox

Let's see.

Here are the results I got from that: 

Your Dropbox folder /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox entries approximate count is 3
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 65536
Current status is Up to date
File: "/mnt/sdc1/Dropbox"
ID: 4ad9ef1f9c1b76fa Namelen: 255 Type: ext2/ext3
Block size: 4096 Fundamental block size: 4096
Blocks: Total: 1695313369 Free: 1304607246 Available: 1219150652
Inodes: Total: 213635072 Free: 210967477

You are using officially unsupported FS type - ext3. Anyway... Dropbox can't make distinction between ext3 and ext4, so this is unlikely be a reason. But this approximate count - 3, seems wrong (suspicious, at least). Are you sure there are some files in the Dropbox folder? Can they be seen using following command:

tree -a /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox

Don't post the above result, if it's Ok. If the above don't have error, post the result of following command:

echo -n "Your Dropbox folder /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox entries approximate count is "; tree -a /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox | wc -l

I got an error from the first one: 

[error opening dir] 

0 directories, 0 files

The second one gave me 3, again.

There are definitely files in the Dropbox folder, I use them all the time. Nautilus says there are 200,282 files in there. 

I don't know if this is relevant but I was looking again at this page you linked and when I entered 

i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i

the result was 211888. 

🧐🤔 No, no, no... You're killing me. That's impossible. 'ls' and 'tree' both do very similar things. It's impossible for one of them 'error opening dir', but for the other no problem - both need the same access (ls - even a bit more). 🤷 Are you sure the both are execouted in same context - the same local user 'naomi'? 🧐

What's the result of following:

ls -ld /mnt/sdc1; ls -ld /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox; ls -al /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox

PS: Since your max watches border seems not set, we can least set it forcibly. Execute the following:

sudo bash -c 'echo "fs.inotify.max_user_watches=250000" >> /etc/sysctl.conf; sysctl -p'; dropbox stop; dropbox start

I'm sure I'm using the same local user. For the first one, I got:

drwx------ 17 naomi naomi 77824 Jan 30 17:22 /mnt/sdc1
drwxrwx--- 18 naomi naomi 4096 Jan 30 17:47 /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox
total 896
drwxrwx--- 18 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:47  .
drwx------ 17 naomi naomi  77824 Jan 30 17:22  ..
drwxr-xr-x  4 naomi naomi   4096 Aug 27 15:07  Apps
drwxr-xr-x 16 naomi naomi   4096 Aug 27 15:07 'Art Backup'
drwxrwxr-x  6 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:29 'Audio Files'
drwxr-xr-x  2 naomi naomi 491520 Jan 23 14:15 'Camera Uploads'
drwxr-xr-x 23 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:47  Documents
drwxrwxr-x  4 naomi naomi   4096 Jan  8 19:17  Downloads
-rw-r--r--  1 naomi naomi     41 Jan 30 17:10  .dropbox
drwxr-xr-x  6 naomi naomi   4096 Sep 17 16:32  .dropbox.cache
drwxr-xr-x  4 naomi naomi 258048 Jan  8 14:59  FontBase
drwxr-xr-x 94 naomi naomi   4096 Sep 17 19:42 'for drawing'
drwxr-xr-x 14 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 29 18:02 'In Case of Emergency'
drwxr-xr-x  2 naomi naomi   4096 Jun 17  2020 'Mobile Uploads'
drwxr-xr-x  5 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:11 'My PC (DESKTOP-3G3TVJD)'
drwxr-xr-x 18 naomi naomi   4096 Jan  9 15:20  Photos
drwxrwxr-x 17 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:08  Pictures
drwxr-xr-x  2 naomi naomi   4096 Aug 27 15:13  Public
drwxr-xr-x 21 naomi naomi   4096 Jan 30 17:30  Shared

No problems with the 2nd one.

Ok, The good news is absence of any access permission issues (as much as could be seens). The bad thing is time lost to we figure out there is something wrong with 'jq' and 'tree' install you have performed. Anyway... You can check out what's done in wrong, if want, and we won't use them here from now on.

Just to make sure there isn't anything previously left from, if you haven't restarted your configuration since last command, restart it now. So, let's check the current state. Post the result from:

i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo "Your Dropbox folder /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox entries approximate count is $i"; sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

Hope the results will be better now. 😉 By the way, are some visible changes happening - come some (at least) of the missing entries up? 🧐

I got: 

Your Dropbox folder /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox entries approximate count is 211896
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 250000 

I'm not sure how many folders aren't syncing properly, but I checked a couple that I know haven't been sycning right and those still have missing files (and none of the missing files have been added). I recently added a bunch of files to Dropbox via Windows, and all of those have synced to the Linux folder. The Linux app says that everything is up to date. 

Hi sleepysloth,

Now everything seems better. Should be some other issue. Can you post the log on dropbox start? Actually, post the result of:

dropbox stop; rm -rf /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox/.dropbox*; dropbox start

Wait for the moment when startup process finished completely. Let's see if there are some helper messages (sometimes could be when something goes wrong).

You can try following command:

(IFS=$'\n'; for a in `find /mnt/sdc1/Dropbox -type d -print`; do if [[ "$a" =~ "/.dropbox" ]]; then echo "<empty>"; else cd $a; echo "In directory $a:"; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vE "<empty>|up to date|\.dropbox|infinite" | grep -B 1 -vE "In directory .+:"

Is the result showing some file or folder "unwatched" or similar unusual state? 🤔 The best case would be nothing. Also can you take a look around places where miss entries? Is there something unusual (containing folder gets out of sync, for example)? 🧐