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rodduarte's avatar
rodduarte
Explorer | Level 4
8 years ago

Dropbox in Ubuntu "Dropbox isn't running! Dropbox is already running!"

Dear Dropbox community

 

I have been struggling with my Dropbox on Ubuntu for a while now. The icon on the system tray had disappeared, but files were still syncing. I tried a couple of things to make the icon come back, according to previous users who experieced similar scenario. It did not work, and now I upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 (from 17.04). I removed Dropbox, reinstalled it and Dropbox won't even open anymore. When I start it from the command line, it says

"Dropbox isn't running!

Dropbox is already running!"

 

Now I am getting this error when starting Dropbox (although it won't start, it justs loads the process):

Gtk-Message: 08:12:04.932: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar"
Done!
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rodrigo/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-51.4.66/PyQt5.QtDBus.so'

(dropbox:3330): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 08:12:04.974: cannot register existing type 'GdkDisplayManager'

(dropbox:3330): GLib-CRITICAL **: 08:12:04.974: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed

(dropbox:3330): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 08:12:04.974: g_object_new_with_properties: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed

 

When I click on the Dropbox icon in the apps page, nothing happens. Any ideas?

desktop

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  • ldamico's avatar
    ldamico
    Explorer | Level 4
    7 years ago

    Hi cfgobel, unfortunately none of the responses by the Dropbox support helped. Neither did the technicians who worked on my ticket. 

     

    Eventually, deleting completely the installation and installing through command line helped me in managing the problem. I managed to install the command line version, which although it misses the GUI which is very useful for selective sync, is still better than having nothing. Some days ago, quite magically (in the sense that it happened completely out of the blue, without me doing anything except for writing a document) the icon appeared in the system tray and stuff seems to work! 

  • MPaulosky's avatar
    MPaulosky
    New member | Level 2
    7 years ago

    Hi,

    I had the same issue. It was caused by setting 

    export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gnome

    in ~/.profile. When I moved it to ~/.bashrc and rebooted Dropbox started normally and now I have full GUI support with trayicon. 

    I'm using Ubuntu 18.10 and this setting is related to QGnomePlatform:
    https://github.com/FedoraQt/QGnomePlatform

    Hope that helps!

  • cfgobel's avatar
    cfgobel
    New member | Level 2
    7 years ago

    In the end, I completely reinstall my ubuntu. I didn't see @MPauloky answer before.

    Thanks anyway, guys.

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