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alexreinking
13 days agoNew member | Level 2
Dropbox fails to start on Linux systems where /home is a symbolic link
Device
Dell XPS 15 9520
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Fedora 43 Kinoite
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
v240.4.8493
Syncing Status
Up to date (workaround exists)
Question or Issue
I noticed this issue after installing Dropbox via Flatpak, but I confirmed it exists on the headless official version, too.
Fedora 43 Kinoite (and other atomic distros like Bazzite) keeps most of the root partition read-only, mounting a btrfs subvolume at `/home`, which is a symbolic link to `/var/home`. On my system, I see this:
alex@alex-laptop:/var/home/alex$ echo $HOME
/home/alex
alex@alex-laptop:/var/home/alex$ grep $USER /etc/passwd
alex:x:1000:1000:Alex Reinking:/home/alex:/bin/bash
alex@alex-laptop:/var/home/alex$ grep home /etc/fstab
UUID=b3440961-1f62-4818-a9c8-1b83b2c2c23f /home btrfs subvol=home,compress=zstd:1,x-systemd.device-timeout=0 0 0
After launching the Dropbox daemon, I am prompted to sign in. After doing so, Dropbox fails to create the ~/Dropbox directory, displaying the following error dialog:
One way to work around this is to manually resolve the symbolic link:
$ export HOME=$(realpath ~)
$ ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
See more discussion here: https://github.com/flathub/com.dropbox.Client/issues/392
After doing this once, however, Dropbox is able to continue working; likely because the information in ~/.dropbox bypasses the broken file system check.
Please fix Dropbox's file system support check!
1 Reply
- Jay13 days ago
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi alexreinking, thanks for joining the Community.
We appreciate this detailed information on the issue you experienced with the Dropbox desktop application on Linux.
We take all feedback and comments into consideration when improving the Dropbox app and services.
If you need any further assistance, please let me know!
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