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Dropbox GUI gone after Debian 10 Buster Upgrade

Hello,

I used to run Debian 9.x with Kernel 5.1.x with GNOME desktop and Dropbox GUI installed from the Dropbox website (deb file). Usually in the bottom left corner there was a little box to find the Dropbox icon, and to configure it.
After Buster update I still can start Dropbox and see it in "Processes" doing its work, but the GUI cannot be accessed anymore. I did reinstall the lastest Dropbox deb file and made a reboot, same issue. Dropbox has gone invisible ..

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Pummelchen

Solution found:

Disable GNOME Extension TopIcons Plus and instead install and enable gnome-shell-extension-appindicator, reboot, done.

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

Seems that TopIcons Plus is not working in Debian 10 due to the newer GNOME version.

Thanks to everyone with ideas and suggestions !

All comments

Walter

Hey there @Pummelchen - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Even though this specific distro is not officially supported, could you check if you're also running the Topicons extension (as this might be needed to get the tray icon)?

For a complete list of our requirements for linux machines, you can also see below:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/system-requirements#linux

Let me know what you find!

Pummelchen

Hello Walter,

topicons seems to be incompatible with Buster. So I tried topicons plus and got the Dropbox icon back:

apt install firefox-esr
Start Firefox
Goto GNOME Extension website
Install GNOME Browser Extension
Install & Enable GNOME Extension TopIcons Plus
Remove previous Dropbox installation
Reboot
apt install dropbox

Dropbox Icon will apprear on the top bar but doesnt respond to any clicks. Left click, right click or house hover over the icon lead to no actions, no popup windows or anything. Just nothing happens.

Debian 10 uses Wayland instead of X which seems to cause all sorts of trouble.

I'm not sure if the issue is from me upgrading from Debian 9 to 10, but I will replicate this later tonight.

Здравко

Hi @Pummelchen,

I will share some my experiences, may be similar to Yours. Sometime ago, every try to open Dropbox icon context menu for first time after service start, result in partially visible menu or entirely invisible. In addition it was impossible to close it using simple click on empty place or something like. It was need opening new window or some other big change in the desktop environment, so the 'dummy' menu to disappear. After that Dropbox menu appear as usual. It was happening only for Dropbox menu. For latest releases seems that's gone. I don't know which one is Your version, but You can still check for that - just to be sure. For example, after first try to open context menu, open and close one more console window for example and after that try the menu again.

Seems You are using virtual installation. So, I will advise You - use mapping of host's Dropbox folder as a virtual drive in the virtual machine. In such a way You will keep lower Your network traffic and more 'natural' and fast transfer between the host and the virtual machine.

Good luck!

Pummelchen

Seems to be a more serious issue:

I made a fresh new clean installtion of Debian 10 in VMware using these steps

boot from debian-10.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
in the "Software Selection" page, unselect everything (nothing ticked)
finished setup and login as su
Install GNOME with: apt install gnome-core
boot into to GNOME desktop
Download latest Dropbox deb file, install, and confirm the Dropbox website authorization
Start Dropbox

Same issue now, you can see Dropbox running and beeing very busy, but no icon is visible anywhere.

I will test one more thing, by ticking GNOME as the Desktop choice in "Software Selection". So I will reinstall on a clean formatted disk and report back.

Здравко

Opp... Hmm... @Pummelchen,

One note here. The Dropbox debian package is little bit buggy . There are no any dependencies ceclared! So, You have to ensure that everything declared in system dependencies page is installed, the package manager can't ensure this (dependencies - missing)!

Nonetheless, what about direct mapping? It's much more convenient (at least I think so). You wouldn't need to install anything.

Pummelchen

Same issue with GNOME selected during setup:

In Debian 9 there was no requirement to install dependencies, it just worked using the deb file.

I manually installed the dependencies recommended above but it does not change anything (https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/system-requirements#linux)

Walter, can you please escalate this to be checked on higher level ? Dropbox on Debian needs to work out of the box, supported or not.

Pummelchen

Thx for your suggestions. Yes, compared to Windows it is a nightmare to get Dropbox working on Linux.

Direct mapping doesnt work if you share the Dropbox folder over SMB/FTP in a LAN where thousands of files are moved per day. The mapping software (like Expandrive, NetDrive etc.) at some point will get messed up. The Dropbox client itself, can keep up with that quite well. Rsync may work but I really want the original Dropbox GUI to make things simple to manage.

Здравко

I use Dropbox in Ubuntu and (if we ignore the relatively bad support) it work fine.

Seem I wasn't clear enough about the mapping. I haven't used VmWare, but in VirtualBox, for example, without using any external tools, You cat select some folder in host file system and map content as content of a virtual drive in the virtual machine. I don't believe that in VmWare missing such functionality. In such a way single Dropbox installation (per real machine) can serve multiple Os-es, without additional Dropbox installations at all. That's what I mean.

Pummelchen

Solution found:

Disable GNOME Extension TopIcons Plus and instead install and enable gnome-shell-extension-appindicator, reboot, done.

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

Seems that TopIcons Plus is not working in Debian 10 due to the newer GNOME version.

Thanks to everyone with ideas and suggestions !

Pummelchen

Yes, you can do the same in VMware. However my scenario is different:

Host OS only uses Dropbox to sync VMware machines. One Debian VM syncs all Dropbox data (except the VMware machines) and provides that Dropbox folder to the LAN via SMB/FTP. Having Dropbox on each server/workstation creates a mess, so we switched to a centralized solution with SMB/FTP and use 1 Dropbox instance as a background cloud sync.

The benefit is that the VMware host can crash, and I can quickly deploy the Dropbox VM to a new server and do not need to resync everything. Its much faster to manage a LAN this way.

oliviercailloux

Does not work for me, using Debian stable (Buster), before or after installing (with apt-get) gnome-shell-extension-appindicator.

Dropbox icon is completely invisible, so I can’t access any of its functionality. (Daemon still works.)