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Forum Discussion
Solved
I created 2.4M files over the limit on the desktop app and now it's stuck syncing.
Application Affected
Dropbox Device
Dell OptiPlex 980 Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Ubuntu Linux Dropbox App Version (if using the app) v237.4.5655
Question or Issue ...
Hi there,
I followed the instructions to remove the Dropbox Application, and reinstalled it. Everything is back to normal now, which is a huge relief.
I'm a retired software developer, so I have some recommendations.
- Include in your documentation that there's a limit to the total number of files that a user can have in their Dropbox folder. I assumed (heh) that the only limit was the total amount of space. The files I was trying to add had a total space of about 3.2G -- way less than my current 2T limit, so I thought I would be fine. (Narrator: He was not fine.) The status messages also didn't make sense: if you look back on this thread, you can see the application was indexing some random number of files (OK), uploading a few dozen files (OK), and downloading lots of files (What?) Clearly, something Really Bad was going on.
- Add a safety feature that notices that a user has added too many files, and a) automatically pause syncing, and b) let the user know there's a problem. My computer was driven to the rails for 48 hours while the application tried to sync way too many files. I'm very grateful that my hard drive is still alive.
- I made the mistake of mixing my Google authentication with my Dropbox userid/password authentication when logging on to the websites (dropbox.com and dropboxforum.com) -- no doubt confusing the authentication layer. It would follow either login with an SMS verification which worked until .. it didn't, because I'd used it too many times in a particular time period. My Dropbox userid is the same as my Google userid, which may be the source of the problem. I didn't find that the "Send something to the app" feature worked either, but I just have the daemon running, so perhaps that's the issue.Finally, I didn't see any instructions in the Dropbox documentation about deleting the cache to address my problem (and I don't think anyone mentioned it in this thread). I worried that if I did that, the application would break (of course, I would only do this when the application was stopped). That is what I wanted to do -- tell the application, "Look, forget about this directory, it was a mistake. Let's just start over."
Thanks to you and the other mods. Cheers.
The story so far: Our hero created 2.4M files in a Dropbox directory, not realizing that there's a soft limit of 300K files. After running for about 48 hours, the Dropbox app failed. The hero wrote on dropboxforum.com, trying to figure out a solution.
Eventually, he decided to delete the files locally, and was able to log in to Dropbox on the web using his MBP. He deleted the same files on Dropbox. He rebooted his Linux machine, guessing that the application would check local and remote, and figure out that everything was up to date.
The Linux machine started up fine, and Dropbox did its initialization .. and then went back to uploading files (from a local queue, maybe?) Our hero decided to leave things running, and came back to find that Dropbox had used up all of the memory, all of the cache, and then crashed.
At this, our hero is contemplating what to do next. Uninstall Dropbox (hopefully wiping out the queue?) and then reinstall? Will the queue survive the uninstall/reinstall? Can he clear the queue without doing the uninstall/reinstall dance?
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorThanks for the update on this talexb - much appreciated.
At this point, I'd suggest logging out of the Dropbox desktop app through the app's preferences, delete your cache folder and then try to log in again.
Let me know how it goes.
