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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.

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Accepted answers

Dinjay

JC from Dropbox Support provided instructions to resolve this issue by doing a full reinstall and re-sync and it worked for me. The Start Dropbox on system startup option now works as expected and I can turn off autostart.

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First, make sure you save and quit ALL programs that access files in the Dropbox folder.

Note: Please be sure to make a note or take a screenshot of any Selective Sync settings you may have applied as well as the location of your Dropbox folder (if not in the default location) prior to re-installing, as you will need to match these settings upon re-install. If you're using a headless version of Dropbox you can access the list of Selective Sync folders by running "dropbox exclude".

Depending on your OS and the package you used to perform the installation, you could have files in two different locations. I'm sending you instructions for both of the cases, so if some of the commands error out don't worry.

Run the following commands in your terminal:

dropbox stop
dropbox status # Should report "not running"
rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get remove dropbox
rm /etc/apt/source.d/dropbox

Once you're done you have two options:

1) Install the Dropbox application with its graphical components using one of our packages. If you want to do that, download the correct package for your OS and architecture here:

https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=linux

Open your downloads folder and double click on the package file to start the installer.

When Dropbox has finished installing, please sign in and apply any Selective Sync settings you may have had prior to the reinstall and select the Dropbox folder location (if not in the default location) during the sign in process. Your account will take a few moments to reindex the files and sync any pending changes.

2) The second option is to run a headless version of Dropbox. This version will not have any of the menus or graphical components and can only be interacted with through the command line. To install this version do the following:

If your machine is 32-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

If your machine is 64-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -

Next, run the Dropbox daemon from the newly created .dropbox-dist folder.

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

When Dropbox has finished installing please sign in and apply any Selective Sync settings you may have had prior to the reinstall. Your account will take a few moments to reindex the files and sync any pending changes.

More installation and CLI information is also available here:

https://www.dropbox.com/install

Once that's done, please open the preferences of the application, (via right clicking the tray icon), and in the Accounts tab of preferences, untick "Start Dropbox on system Startup".

All comments

Karina

Hey @Dinjay thanks for your message and hope you're having a nice day! :slight_smile:

Normally, unchecking the Dropbox app as an automatic startup program should prevent Dropbox from starting up the next time you run your device.

However, here's something you can try out if you haven't already:

dropbox autostart [y/n]

Options:
→ n Dropbox will not start automatically at login. ←

( y Dropbox will start automatically at login - which is the default )

This command may only work on Ubuntu 10.04 or higher (so, you should be good if you carry out this command).

Give this a try and let me know how it works for you and if you're able to stop Dropbox's autostart upon system startup. Thanks in advance!

FrankLinux

Hello Dinjay,

I suggest you to choose the headless installation from Command Line and use the Python script attached here to control the daemon! In such a way, if your problem still happens, you can create a script to automatically execute the python and close Dropbox. The command is

./dropbox.py stop

Have a nice day!

Ross_S

@FrankLinux beat me to it.
The script mentioned would be the best way.

Dinjay

@Karina

That command removed dropbox autostart (ie removed from Startup Applications) temporarily.

But if I run Dropbox again, it automatically added itself back on to autostart. This means that I would need to manually run that command each time after running Dropbox.

Dinjay

@FrankLinux

I strongly prefer to use the GUI.

This is likely to be a new bug so hopefully it will be fixed before too long.

Before using the headless version, I'd probably first try to lock down the autostart file (eg create a ****** dropbox.desktop with restricted permissions).

Ross_S

Apologies, the auto-start box has recently disappeared and will reappear shortly (in the next version), potentially resolving your issue.

Dinjay

@Ross_S

Great to hear.

Just to clarify, the "Start Dropbox on system startup" option is still there and it's possible to tick/untick it. The issue is that unticking it does not deactive Dropbox autostart from the Ubuntu Startup preferences. See image showing Dropbox startup unticked in the front and Ubuntu startup in the back showing the Dropbox link still active.

Screenshot from 2018-02-22 12-18-42.png Dropbox pref in front and Ubuntu startup pref in back

Kalico

Is this issue being worked on? It is a real pain if one has their Dropbox folder on another partition, which does not automatically get mounted when Ubuntu starts.

I have the tick-box unticked in the preferences, but it still auto-starts every time I reboot.

Dinjay

The problem persists for me, so I hope someone's working on it!

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 ****** 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.

Dinjay

That's workaround would work, but I preferred not to do that because it may have unintended side-effects for Ubuntu as well as when Dropbox eventually fixes this bug. While annoying, it seems safer to just quick Dropbox, go into Startup Applications from Ubuntu dash and then manually remove Dropbox from the startup programs. This needs to be done each time after running Dropbox.

Kalico

Another few weeks tick by, without a peep from Dropbox!

Dinjay

I think this is just the community forum, not the the support site. Try filing ticket with https://dropbox.zendesk.com. I filed a ticket and have been corresponding with one of their support people but no outcome so far. It would be good if others also file tickets so that this issue gets esclated.

Dinjay

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