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 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:
53 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
silvacarl, If the only thing that you're looking for is isolation of all files which status is not up to date, then following command can do this:
find ~/Dropbox -type d,f,l -exec dropbox filestatus '{}' ';' | grep -iv "up to date"Of course, if your Dropbox' folder position is different, adapt the path. Not necessary something different than "up to date" be troublesome mandatory (some files normal are not in sync), but you will have a relatively short list (let's hope) to look in and find actual troublesome files. For huge number of files this check will take some time, so be patient. You shouldn't expect this to solve something - it just shows status. Dropbox application should work during this command execution.
well, without a doubt something weird/corrupted was in my dropbox. there are no tools to find something like this.
in order to fix the problem, i created a new dropbox account and gave it some test files.
it was insanely fast and now works perfectly.
so i am in the process of moving files over.
if you know of a simple/easy way to move entire directories from one dropbox account to anotehr let me know.
once i have moved everything over that i want, i will kill/deactivate my old account which i have had for years !!!!!!!!!!!!
p.s. threre is/was no other way to fix this problem. which is really odd, given the fact dropbox has been around for ages. makes zero sense to me at all.
also, this method is much better/more reliable to install on ubuntu 20.04:
# use URL to drowndload latest install kit
https://linux.dropboxstatic.com/packages/ubuntu/
https://linux.dropbox.com/packages/ubuntu/dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
dropbox start -ithan this one:
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
silvacarl wrote:...
if you know of a simple/easy way to move entire directories from one dropbox account to anotehr let me know.
...
The simplest (and fast) way to move folders between account is to share them, either as share folder and follow up transfer ownership or using shared links to every one folder and follow up adding them to the new account.
It's good idea to do it step by step (folder by folder) and wait until every ongoing folder get in sync before continue to the next. In such a way if there is something wrong in some folder, you will be aware where the issue is (least the folder).
Good luck.
