Saving files on local server, permissions issues? Delete issues? Weird behaviour?

[tomlivings]

Setup:

Our office has a server. A physical one, on our local network.

We have users on machines on our local network.

We have 3 remote fulltime staff.

Our office server is the only machine on the network with Dropbox installed. 

Problems:

We use Photoshop and 3ds Max. We save big files. Between 2gig and 15gig files are common. ALL files are on server, not on local machines. 

Error 1: Save file. Within a few minutes save file (not rename, just hit save). Error shows user does not have permission to save file. Open windows location. Cant see file. Cant delete. Can see a temp file (format is program dependent). Solution is to 'save-as' and rename file from within app (PS or Max). This creates alot of bloat and lots of versions of the same file.

Error 2: Related to error 1. Delete files in windows. Files repopulate, they just re-appear. But we cant open them.

Hypothesis: we have a registry on DB that is overriding windows registry. So when we try and save over a file that was recently saved, there is a conflict. This would hold given error 2; that the files deleted reappear. Given time they re-delete properly. 

Its a problem, not just a nuisance. Our file naming convention is consistent all through our production pipeline, so as 3ds Max is the beginning step, it has a knock-on effect through a whole project. I think this problem started about 2 months ago, was a slick solution before that. 

Any help much appreciated. 

[Hannah]

Hey @tomlivings, thanks for reaching out to our Community.

Generally, hosting Dropbox on a server is not something we support, but let's see what we can find out about this.

Can you replicate the issue on a different computer with an operating system listed as supported here?

Is Dropbox running as a service on your server or was it installed as a regular application?

Any additional info you can give us about your setup, would also be appreciated.

Thanks.

[tomlivings]

hmmm, not sure what additional info I can give. 

The workstations on the network are all W11 and the server is W10. All pro. 

All workstations log onto the server using the same logon and password. Can that cause a problem? I dont really want to put a bunch of user profiles on the server. 

All software and OS's are licensed and legit. All updates are auto to be current. 

All machines have 2 ip addresses on separate NICs. One for internet (auto-ip to hook into the 1gig broader office network on 10.0.0.xxx), the other is our local network on fixed ip's (10.0.1.xxx) for our local 10gig network for the studio. 

Our internet is not very reliable, has many 'mini-outages'. Not sure if that can cause issues?

Was a great system up to two months ago... 

[Hannah]

Thanks for the update here, Tom.

Can you also confirm that there aren't multiple profiles accessing and/or editing the same files at the same time while logged into the app?

[tomlivings]

Confirmed, we see this problem when one user is saving one file and no-one else is. 

[Walter]

Were you running the Dropbox desktop app as a service on your Server or was it installed as a regular app @tomlivings ?

Also, if you'd like to find out more information on how to migrate the content of a server to Dropbox and suggestions to improve the efficacy of the process, visit this help center article.