Dropbox in Ubuntu "Dropbox isn't running! Dropbox is already running!"

[rodduarte]

Dear Dropbox community

I have been struggling with my Dropbox on Ubuntu for a while now. The icon on the system tray had disappeared, but files were still syncing. I tried a couple of things to make the icon come back, according to previous users who experieced similar scenario. It did not work, and now I upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 (from 17.04). I removed Dropbox, reinstalled it and Dropbox won't even open anymore. When I start it from the command line, it says

"Dropbox isn't running!

Dropbox is already running!"

Now I am getting this error when starting Dropbox (although it won't start, it justs loads the process):

Gtk-Message: 08:12:04.932: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar"
Done!
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rodrigo/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-51.4.66/PyQt5.QtDBus.so'

(dropbox:3330): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 08:12:04.974: cannot register existing type 'GdkDisplayManager'

(dropbox:3330): GLib-CRITICAL **: 08:12:04.974: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed

(dropbox:3330): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 08:12:04.974: g_object_new_with_properties: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed

When I click on the Dropbox icon in the apps page, nothing happens. Any ideas?

[Walter]

Sorry to hear about this @cfgobel - could you ensure you're meeting all of requirements as per this Help Center article: 

https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements

Note that if you’re computer is running Linux, and you want to run the Dropbox app, you need to use:

• Operating system Ubuntu 14.04 or higher, Fedora 21 or higher
• Glibc 2.19 or higher
• The latest Dropbox app for Linux
  • Download the latest app
• A Dropbox folder on an ext4-formatted hard drive or partition

 [Note: ecryptfs is not supported, but Dropbox will continue to sync with supported file systems that are encrypted via full disk encryption (e.g. LUKS)]

In addition, if you’d like to get the full Dropbox desktop app, you need to use:

• A computer capable of running the required operating system, and one of the following desktop environments:
  • GNOME shell (may need the TopIcons extension to get the tray icon)
  • Unity
  • GNOME Classic
  • XFCE with the corresponding Nautilus dependencies
• These additional requirements, when applicable:
  • GTK 2.24 or higher
  • Glib 2.40 or higher
  • Libappindicator 12.10 or higher
  • Nautilus 3.10.1 or higher

If you're still having issues with this, you might need to perform an advanced re-install to attempt to fix this issue. 

Keep me posted on your progress!

[ldamico]

Hi @cfgobel, unfortunately none of the responses by the Dropbox support helped. Neither did the technicians who worked on my ticket. 

Eventually, deleting completely the installation and installing through command line helped me in managing the problem. I managed to install the command line version, which although it misses the GUI which is very useful for selective sync, is still better than having nothing. Some days ago, quite magically (in the sense that it happened completely out of the blue, without me doing anything except for writing a document) the icon appeared in the system tray and stuff seems to work! 

[MPaulosky]

Hi,

I had the same issue. It was caused by setting 

export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gnome

in ~/.profile. When I moved it to ~/.bashrc and rebooted Dropbox started normally and now I have full GUI support with trayicon. 

I'm using Ubuntu 18.10 and this setting is related to QGnomePlatform:
https://github.com/FedoraQt/QGnomePlatform

Hope that helps!

[cfgobel]

In the end, I completely reinstall my ubuntu. I didn't see @MPauloky answer before.

Thanks anyway, guys.