Unable to monitor dropbox folder

[albrechtmyers]

I'm using Dropbox on an Arch Linux System. Everything worked fine for months now, until today. When running Dropbox from command line, it prints the error message:

Unable to monitor entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Please run "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" and restart Dropbox to fix the problem.

I don't like running terminal commands blindly without thinking about it, especially when running as sudo. So I'd really like to understand why Dropbox needs that fix, especially after running fine for months.

[Walter]

Hi @albrechtmyers - welcome to our Community!

If you are getting the error "Unable to monitor filesystem" then you have hit the default limit for Linux of 10000 folders. This limit can be changed by running the following command in a terminal:

sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000

To make this limit permanent you can edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf and add the same command, but without the "sudo sysctl".

You can see more information about this in the relevant Help Center article:

• https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/files-not-syncing 

I hope this helps clear things up a tad for you and I'm always a post away if you have any more questions.