Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
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...
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:
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:
For years I've been trying to get this to work on Debian. Maybe at some point the dropbox headless deamon worked on Debian, now not anymore. I've connected an account with only 1500 files and 2GB of data. On Debian I can copy new files to the Dropbox folder and they will sync, but Dropbox will not download new files that are added to the account.
Permissions are correct. Maximum watched files is at 8000. I've spent too much time trying to install the dropbox daemon as a system service, hoping I could get it to write to the syslog. I simply can't get it working on Debian.
This guide just gives me a dead service:
https://www.jamescoyle.net/how-to/1147-setup-headless-dropbox-sync-client
This guide gets me stuck on the fact Debian doesn't have "/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions", and also there is no "/etc/sysconfig" folder.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-and-run-dropbox-from-a-headless-linux-server/
(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"
this won't run because "dropbox" isn't a valid command on my Debian install.
Здравко wrote:Hi holf,
At the beginning you can try fix possible permission errors:
sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox" sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox" chmod -R u+rw ~/DropboxAlso, 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 $iThe above will give you some estimation. The current upper border could be received using:
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watchesIf the estimation above don't fit in last result, try extend the border using something like:
sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000Tune the value according your needs (with some reserve, of course).
If nothing helps yet, try to find out the exact files making troubles (which will give you chance investigate further), using something like:
(IFS=$'\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.extGood luck.
DokterChaos wrote:...
(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:"
this won't run because "dropbox" isn't a valid command on my Debian install.
...
Hi DokterChaos,
🙂 If particular command isn't installed using appropriate package, ... it's just not a valid command (of course). Only restricted set of command are embedded in the used shell (they vary according selected shell), all other command have to be installed (some command are preinstalled of course). Dropbox isn't preinstalled, that's why you have to install it using appropriate package or by hand (put the control script named "dropbox" in an appropriate place - take a look on your PATH variable). Then, the command would get valid. 😉 That's it.
By the way, there are many different ways you can use to install Dropbox application as a service, but you should be careful. This is NOT officially supported yet! I don't know what exactly you are doing, but you should place the daemon in the same condition like in usual user context, otherwise only troubles could be expected. There are many right and many wrong ways, just be careful.
Hope this sheds some light on the matter.
In case this might be helpful for others searching like I was:
I modified Здравко's most recent command to look like so:
find ~/Dropbox/ -name .dropbox -prune -o -name .dropbox.cache -prune -o -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -l dropbox filestatus | egrep -v 'up to date|syncing'This has the following advantages:
* doesn't barf on directories with spaces
* doesn't barf on files with colons
* works on other shells besides bash
To be fair, it also has the following disadvantages:
* doesn't list directories that don't have any "interesting" files
* which also means it will go for long periods without outputting anything at all
* doesn't sort the directories
This can provide some really interesting info, so thank you @Здравко for providing it.
For those looking for quick solutions and who thought to look at the last post, the tip for increasing `fs.inotify.max_user_watches` is really the most likely solution. The suggestion of 100,000 is good, but figure out how many files you actually have:
find ~/Dropbox/ -name .dropbox -prune -o -name .dropbox.cache -prune -o -print | wc -land make sure when you edit `/etc/sysctl.conf` (to add or increase it) that the number you put is bigger than what you get out of that `find`. If you're worried about making it too big, I did find one reference that suggested that Dropbox will use about 1k for every file it has to monitor (i.e. the number from the `find` just above). I've set mine to 500,000, which would use about 0.5Gb of RAM if this source is correct. My total Dropbox process is taking up about 5.4Gb, but this is a pretty beefy machine and it can tolerate that quite easily, so make sure you take your machine's total RAM into consideration.
