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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 indexing/uploading/downloading a small number of files. In addition, I noticed that when I rename a file on my hard disk, the name of that file is not always changed in the cloud. I tried the two fix options and did a complete reinstall of the dropbox client, but no success. I would appreciate any help.
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:
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I have tried everything i can find anywhere to get dropbox working correctly on Ubuntu 20.04.
I even flushed a machine and rebuilt it. Same problem.
I am using to to synch between my dev machine and a hosted Ubuntu 20.04.
Up until last week, it had no problems whatsoever.
Now, it goes into "Indeexing" and never finishes, ever.
Any ideas?
My personal solution was to cancel my Dropbox account and buy a Synology NAS. I've never been happier. Synology support actually helps you with problems, as opposed to just closing the ticket without doing anything. Highly recommended.
- After having similar issues, my end result was use my Dropbox subscription money to buy an extra hard disk and install OMV on my server. I haven’t been happier.
Hi all!
There may be different reasons Dropbox application not to work and refuse to sync some files. Sometimes it's result from some third party app behavior that sets files in such a way that other application (including Dropbox) cannot work correctly. There are many bugs, in the Dropbox application itself though, that lead to such a behavior too. Long time ago one such bug was discussed in details, but seems the discussion is removed (or I cannot find it already). I tried to put a link here, but... 🤷 Probably Dropbox staff is not happy when information for unsolved bug persist on the forum and that's why it's wiped out. In short - different Dropbox applications put on some files attributes (not only local extended, it's happens on Dropbox server) that are able to confuse another application instances. These are attributes that only some application understand, but probably by mistake, spread to all applications and make some of them behave strange. That looks like a conceptual bug of Dropbox application design - something that Dropbox' staff refuse to accept 🤦 unfortunately and as seems fix wont be provided. This happens most often for files (or possible for some of them) that are added from Dropbox application on Mac and have to be in sync with some Linux machine. Sometimes Dropbox application on Mac adds file' properties that confuse Dropbox application on Linux (I havent seen such issue with files that come from Windows, not yet at least). Something I observe is that files are synced locally and immediately removed after that (file browser cannot even see them actually). And since the file is still not in sync, the application tries to download it anew. At the end everything repeats anew - in a loop. This loop can take some time and (in my case) finally the tries to sync stop. The files are available online, but are missing locally:
I think many of reported cases here full or partial match to this/my case.
As I said Dropbox staff completely refuse to take care for this BUG and you should not rely such thing to happen. The only way (that I know about) to be solved such issue is downloading of all affected files and sync them back to the server. Users don't have direct access to these file properties and cannot wipe them out (alone, without wiping the file out). Care should be taken because sync conflicts are possible. For small number of files download by hands can be a good way, but for large number using a script that automates this is advisable (otherwise may take "forever"). If such an issue is rare/exception, solving it periodically my be some way, but if this happens too often, looking for another service may be a good choice (as some have already done). 🤫
Good luck!
I have been using dropbox for ages to synch datasets across multiple machines. up until monday of this week, i had zero issues with ubutnu 20.10.
in order to try to debug it, i created a fresh ubuntu 20.10 VMware machine which has the exact same results.
this is only occuring on fresh new installs, my existing ubuntu machines synching with windows have zero issues still.
i have even tried copying over every single dropbox related file from an existing machine that works to one that does nto work.
i have gone through all of the recommended stesp from this forum and anywhere else i can find dropbox ubuntu 20/10 issues.
nada. zippo. it stays stuck on indexing.
# to remove dropbox completely:
dropbox stop
dropbox status
# Should report "not running"
rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove -y nautilus-dropbox dropbox
sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME" && sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox && sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox# dropbox install
cat /etc/sysctl.conf
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p
# echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=500000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxdsudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt autoremove -y && dropbox autostart ythat is what i have been doing forever and now it doesnt work on ubuntu 20.04
any ideas?
silvacarl wrote:...
in order to try to debug it, i created a fresh ubuntu 20.10 VMware machine which has the exact same results.
this is only occuring on fresh new installs, my existing ubuntu machines synching with windows have zero issues still.
...
sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME" && sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox && sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox...
silvacarl, Fresh install? 🤔 In such a case where comes this Dropbox folder from, that you try change associated user and mode to? 😀
Try sync everything on fresh and trace what's going on to see where the behavior goes wrong and how. This will let you debug your issue further on. You may be interested in: are the files going to start sync at all; if only some of them has troubles, what's the common between all files that can't sync, etc...
Hope this gives direction.
By the way, when you're going on fresh, don't do meaningless things. Just install the Dropbox application in the regular way, without meaningless steps. Also, the package you're using (nautilus-dropbox) is obsolete (it keeps place there just for back compatibility); use the actual one. You can download a such from here. Once downloaded, install it as follows:
sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb dropbox start -i
That's enough. Don't try newer packages, since they're incompatible!!! (one more Dropbox stupidness) Newer packages are for Gtk4 based distributions only (something that miss in documentation - something normal for Dropbox). Ubuntu 20.04 is Gtk3 based (the same for 22.04). Gtk4 are from 22.10 on.
Observe with care what's going on in the terminal output where you ran Dropbox (don't close it). There will be some application output and possibly some error messages that may give some directions what's going wrong (not mandatory, but possible). Correct whatever needed and try anew to observe.
Do the things in the easiest possible way (without meaningless steps), so gonna be easier to trace what's going on.
Good luck.
Do you have a tool that can find a file that is stuck? In other words, I am 99% certain that the issue is that a file on windows is causing it to be stuck on “Indexing” on Ubuntu 20.04
How can I find that file?
Carl
🙂 If you're aware what exactly it is, I believe something could be found. There isn't something that can solve everything (i.e. some kind of magic).
If you ask for the issue, I described above, your issue (in particular) seems different, so no I don't have anything. In my case the troublesome files cannot sync to any Linux machine, not just to some.
yeah the only way i can see to fix this is to remove anything that was added after 10/08/23 from Windows 11 and then install fresh on Ubuntu 20.04 to see if the problem is fixed.
if not, then i delete the current Dropbox subscription i have and create a new one with a new logins, etc., since i have copies/backups of everything anyways to be on the safe side.
also, thank you for your ideas.
carl
So it turns out there was some stuck file someplace. so i had to create a new dropbox account and need to slowly migrate everything over to it.
i find it bizarre that after thhis many years, there is no method or tool by which to identify these problems and do somethihng about it.
it makes zero sense.
