dropbox filestatus unwatched for all files in Dropbox directory

[Stephen B.25]

Ubuntu 19.10
Dropbox daemon version: 93.4.273
Dropbox command-line interface version: 2020.03.04

Dropbox is keeping up to date -- up and down. But file status reports as unwatched 

$ /home/stephen/Dropbox: dropbox filestatus
.dropbox:                    unwatched
.dropbox.cache:              unwatched
.metadata:                   unwatched
20190904_173012.jpg:         unwatched
20190904_173020.jpg:         unwatched
20190904_173025.jpg:         unwatched
...
and so on for all files/folders in directory

I have restarted Dropbox, restarted device...

What's up?

[Здравко]

Hi @jbiskofski,

All right, since you have find out a solution working for you. Symptoms in your case are slightly different, for sure. 🧐 Your case is different, definitely, so don't mess them!

Good luck! 😉

[netmarine]

Ok I'm experiencing this same issue.  running cat ~/.dropbox/info.json; echo results in

{"personal": {"path": "/persist/Dropbox", "host": 67560646000, "is_team": false, "subscription_type": "Pro"}}

If I cd to /persist/Dropbox  and run dropbox filestatus 

I get that everything is unwatched.

I have also run ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd in a terminal and have added the line fs.inotify.max_user_watches=10000 to /etc/sysctl.conf

and then ran sysctl -p.  

This does not change the result of running dropbox filestatus from the root of local Dropbox tree.  Which I don't really care about,, the problem is that any new files or directories I create on this system do not get sync'd up with the cloud or my other devices.

[Здравко]

Hi @netmarine,

Are you sure that the watches number is enough? How many files have you in your Dropbox folder? You can try the following to check If your selection is fine:

 echo -n "Your Dropbox folder entries approximate count is "; tree -a "/persist/Dropbox" | wc -l; sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

What's the result? You may need install "tree", If not yet.

[netmarine]

So your suggesting that the watches value should exceed the number of files I have in Dropbox?  Yeah, I'm certain it's several million.  roughtly 334 GB of a huge mix of file types including a large volume of source code.

[netmarine]

You know what?   I upped the watches to 10,000,000 and restarted Dropbox and a little while later I ran dropbox filestatus in the root of the Dropbox directory and I got good results, some directories are syncing and some are up to date.   Thanks for your help.

[bfmaier]

This worked for me too. It's kinda mind-boggling that this number is so low per default and that the App doesn't tell you what's going on when you hit the limit and instead just  "unwatches" all files and remain in "syncing" forever. @Dropbox, you should at least address that in the FAQ for Linux.

[Здравко]

---

@bfmaier wrote:

... It's kinda mind-boggling that this number is so low per default and that the App doesn't tell you what's going on when you hit the limit and instead just  "unwatches" all files and remain in "syncing" forever. ...

---

Hi @bfmaier,

I agree that Dropbox application should tell user what's going on in more details when any error happens. Hitting the watches limit is only one of many such cases, unfortunately. 🤦 Proper information for any unwanted events (including logs availability) is a pain for Dropbox.

About the per process watches number, it's not so low. They're used to monitor eventual changes in configuration files, files that the application currently use, etc. Such a mechanism is NOT designated for syncing (generally); Dropbox use them rather as something like workaround, unfortunately. There are much better ways and Dropbox refuses to use them (don't ask me why). The same mechanism (with watches) can be used for syncing too, but as a distributed system for large entries number (something Dropbox application doesn't do).

Let's hope Dropbox designers will improve their system stricture at some point (but better don't relay on).

[bfmaier]

Interesting, thank you for these insights!