Syncing is stuck on my Linux devices, what can I do?

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: