Unable to stop autostart on Ubuntu

[Dinjay]

I run Dropbox (v43.4.50) on Ubuntu (16.04.3). I have unticked the "Start Dropbox on system startup" option in Dropbox Preferences but dropbox still autostarts on boot.

Even if I manually untick or remove Dropbox as a startup program in the Ubuntu Startup Applications Preferences, Dropbox still adds itself back-in the next time Dropbox is run.

This problem only came up a month or two ago so it's likely to be a bug.

[Ross_S]

Hi folks,

 We had an 2 issue previously, one where the user set preference wasn't being adhered to, another where we ran an experiment changing the behaviour. That's what I was referring to above. I'm checking incase either of these are currently impacting Linux, but I don't believe so, we resolved one and changed the other.

 I suspect we need to investigate this on a 1:1 basis with you, but I'm checking now.

Many thanks.

[Dinjay]

---

@Ross_S wrote:

 I suspect we need to investigate this on a 1:1 basis with you, but I'm checking now.

---

This issue seems to affect multiple users - see @Kalico's reponse above. This issue was also raised in the Ask Ubuntu forum.

[Ross_S]

Hi there,

Appologies, on review I'm now looking down a different avenue. I'll speak to the engineers and see what we can diagnose here.

Many thanks for highlighting.

[Kalico]

It is definitely still happening, and a real pain to deal with.

Especially because if Dropbox auto-starts before I get chance to mount the drive (an NTFS volume shared with both Ubuntu and Windows) then Dropbox automatically starts a new full sync from the servers and creates a new local Dropbox folder on the local drive (not the shared volume).

That would be fine, but imagine that happening when on a limited (costly) data connection.  Ouch!  It's like 'accidentally' sync'ing the entire contents on one's Dropbox store and paying for it each time.  Seems ludicrous that it cannot be set to not auto-start.  (Well, the option is there, it's just useless).

[olav]

I am using Debian 9 64 bit and I opted for installing with the ubuntu deb instead of the headless option to get the gui for dropbox. Had same problem as original post; the "Start Dropbox on system startup" option was already unticked even though I never touch it after installation. -Checking the tick box on and off in the preferences did not work. -Removing dropbox.desktop from '~/.config/autostart/' did not work. -Karina's 'dropbox autostart n' on its own did not work. Darn thing was as bad as a persistent virus in how it kept coming back again and again. Definitely a bug. What did worked was FrankLinux's suggestion, the './dropbox.py stop' command. He provided the download link in his post and it is also available at https://www.dropbox.com/install . I then followed up with Karina's 'dropbox autostart n' and finally, dropbox will no longer autostart. I hope this solution works for everyone else 'cause, dang.

[olav]

Never mind my last post. As soon as I manually start up dropbox from the menu, it put back in the dropbox.desktop in the '.config/autostart/ and thus starting this whole thing again. Dropbox developers, please fix this bug/virus.

[Ross_S]

I've reached out to you both individually via email as my team have different questions for each of you.

Many thanks, and we are activley investing this for you.

[N4700]

To anyone out there who is still having this issue, I've discovered a workaround that prevents Dropbox being added back into your startup applications. You need to replace the startup config file with an empty file that the current user doesn't have write access to. This way Dropbox can't replace the file when you start it up. I did this as follows:

cd ~/.config/autostart

rm dropbox.desktop

sudo touch dropbox.desktop

sudo chmod 744 dropbox.desktop

You may need to tweak things slightly if your startup applications are stored in a different place, or the startup config file has a different name.

[Kalico]

Thanks for that and I guess it will work as a workaround, but jeez, that is an ugly thing to have to do, when a firm as large as Dropbox should have a simple problem like this licked within days of it being reported.

My solution has better reflected my lack of confidence in Dropbox: I have moved stuff to Mega. I also feel a little more secure in doing that (rightly or not). For sure their tech-support seems better.

[olav]

I can confirm that N4700's post worked for me. Clever workaround, N4700!

Agreed with Kalico, this should have been fixed.

Ross S., I got your email but no questions within.