Latest Dropbox Beta (194.3.6189) is constantly in Syncing state.

[Hakan B.]

Hello,

Since I use "early access/beta" versions of Dropbox, my system has been updated to 194.3.6189 lately, and the application is constantly in "Syncing..." state. Details are below.

OS Details

• Debian Linux Version 13 (Testing)
• KDE 5.27.10
• Dropbox 194.3.6189

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Install Dropox 194.3.6189
2. Start Dropbox
3. Wait for startup to finish (CPU load will drop from ~90% to 0.3%)
4. Dropbox tray symbol constantly "blinks" blue syncing symbol.
5. Running "dropbox status" on terminal returns "Syncing..." (no file, no ETA, no speed).

Other Notes:

• Not observed on macOS.
• No memory leak observed.
• No excessive disk I/O observed.

[Megan]

Hey @Hakan B., thanks for letting me know about that! 

Can you confirm that your desktop meets the minimum requirements for the desktop app to run normally?

Have you tried completely uninstalling the app from the device and re-installing it anew since you first noticed this? Also, let me know if there's a particular reason you chose the beta version of our app. 

Any additional information or even screenshots of the syncing status are more than welcome.

Keep me posted!

[Hakan B.]

Hi Megan,

Sorry for the late reply. Here's the checklist for compatibility:

• Operating System: Debian 13 Testing (way modern than Ubuntu 14.04)
• glibc: 2.37
• Latest Dropbox App: v194.3.6189
• Filesystem: ext4
• Desktop Environment: KDE (Some menus don't work, but that's another problem, but I'm using Dropbox on KDE for more than 8 years now)
• glib: 2.78
• gtk: 2.24 (plus gtk3 & gtk4 available)
• libappindicator: libayatana-appindicator3

Consindering it's working for more than 8 years, I assume these satisfy the requirements.

I have just removed ".dropbox" and ".dropbox-dist" folders and reinstalled the daemon, plus completed a sync. It's still the same. Below screenshot shows what I get when I run "dropbox status" command:

I started to use Dropbox beta when you started rolling out File Provider support on macOS (I use Dropbox on many devices), and didn't revert back since. Just because I want to see what it brings, and report problems like these.

I've reverted to v193.4.5594 for the time being, and the problem has vanished.

If you need anything else, please let me know.

Cheers,

H.

[LynnDbx · Accepted solution]

Thank you so much for the detailed report! We were able to use that to reproduce the issue on our side and are now working on a fix.

[Hakan B.]

Thanks a lot! I'm glad it helped.

Cheers,

H.

[Susanna W.]

I was also seeing the same thing with v194.3.6189.

v194.3.6224 is even worse: it's constantly in the Starting... status. In which version will this issue be fixed?

[LynnDbx]

The fix for the originally reported issue of incorrectly seeing "Syncing..." should be resolved with the next Dropbox Beta release (v194.3.XXXX), exact version number not known yet. That should be released in the next 48 hours.

Please let us know if that new version does not resolve the "Starting..." issue.