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joekur's avatar
joekur
Helpful | Level 6
4 years ago
Solved

Dropbox not uploading/syncing new files after fresh install of Linux Mint 20.1

Hi All,

I recently upgraded my Linux Mint 19 desktop with a fresh install of Linux Mint 20.1. Dropbox worked brilliantly on Mint 19. After the Mint upgrade and installing Dropbox via the Software Manager, my existing 100GB of files downloaded/synced from the server with no problem. However, new files or folders I create on this computer and save to the Dropbox folder are not uploading and syncing. I have tried uninstalling Dropbox, rebooting, and reinstalling (from both the repository and the Dropbox website), with the same result. I have double-checked that all folders except Vault are checked in Selective Sync under Preferences. I get no error messages. The pop-up menu from the icon in the system tray says it is syncing, and the icon has constant spinning arrows, but nothing seems to be happening. New files do not show up in Dropbox online.

 

I have a second desktop also running Linux Mint, and Dropbox has been syncing on it with no problem for many months, both with an install of 20.1 using the same .iso image I just used on this machine, and more recently after upgrading to 20.3. I can't figure out any differences between the Mint and Dropbox installations. I just experimented creating a new file and folder on that second machine, and it uploaded via Dropbox and synced to my phone right away, but not to this problem desktop.

 

FYI, if you can offer any troubleshooting, please consider me a linux newbie for anything beyond the GUI. I have no problem using a terminal/CLI, but instructions will have to be clear and complete. Thank you!

  • Hi Walter , Здравко , Jay , Hannah ,

    For the sake of completeness I just wanted to post a note here that this issue is resolved and what the problem was.

    After some initial troubleshooting and repeating another remove and reinstall without resolution, tech support had me enter the following commands:

     

    sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"
     
    sudo chown -R "$USER" "/home/joe/Dropbox" ~/.dropbox
     
    sudo chattr -R -i "/home/joe/Dropbox"
     
    sudo chmod -R u+rw "/home/joe/Dropbox" ~/.dropbox

     

    I saw after entering the *chattr* command that I received pages of errors regarding a Timeshift backup folder I'd previously copied into Dropbox (thinking if I ran into problems later in my upgrading and had to do a fresh reinstall of the OS, I could copy the folder back to its original path to restore from). In hindsight a bad idea, but I didn't give it a thought when the Dropbox issue cropped up later.

     

    So once I removed the Timeshift folder from Dropbox, I re-ran the above commands without any errors, and Dropbox subsequently synced properly.

     

    (I guess there is still an open question about the python script, as I tried to run the testdropbox script file again and still got the error, but since that's not causing me current problems, I'll let it slide for now.)

     

    Thank you all again,

    Joe

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