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Dropbox isn't syncing anymore after upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04

I upgraded from Kubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 a little over a week ago. Since then Dropbox isn't syncing anymore. The icon in the task bar keeps switching between the network folder icon and the box icon (Dropbox logo), as if it were really busy up- or downloading something. But nothing actually goes up or down. (E.g. I verified that photos have been uploaded from my phone by checking on the web interface, but they don't come down to my PC. Likewise I created a new file on the PC and it does not show up on the web interface.) When clicking on the menu > "Recently changed files" there is nothing there in the submenu.

I have tried: Uninstalling Dropbox, deleting the settings folders .dropbox, .dropbox-dist and (in the Dropbox folder) .dropbox.cache, reinstalling from the Ubuntu repository, reinstalling from the *.deb file that can be downloaded from the Dropbox website (there was a dependency problem but this https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs-integrations/Unable-to-install-Dropbox-on-Ubuntu-20-04/td-p/405158 helped with that), using apt purge, rebooting during the process, following https://help.dropbox.com/en-US/installs/advanced-reinstall, removing the device from the "Security" settings via the Dropbox website ... no change. The icon keeps blinking, nothing goes up or down.

What else can I try? Any logs I can look at?

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MonikaE

It's working again.

I ran ~/.dropbox-dist$ strace -f ./dropboxd.

It often showed ("Vorgang nicht zulässig" = "activity not allowed"):

[pid 8640] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/monika/Data/Dropbox/Dateien/programme/Videobearbeitung/software/otr-verwaltung3p/data/tools/intern-VirtualDub/wine/dosdevices/z:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/legal/java.compiler", O_RDONLY|O_NOATIME|O_CLOEXEC|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 EPERM (Vorgang nicht zulässig) zu sehen

I moved the entire folder Videobearbeitung out of the Dropbox folder be on the safe side and restarted Dropbox.

Immediately things improved, a notification showed "90 files deleted from Dropbox", my husband's PC showed "9 files changed" for a shared folder and after a while the systray icon stopped blinking and just showed the box (without arrows).

(The weird thing is that I had deleted all local files at one point and Dropbox had downloaded them - including the offending one.)

The "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" probably also was part of the solution.

All comments

Hannah

Hey @MonikaE, thanks for reaching out!

Can you actually check the sync status of the Dropbox app, by hovering your cursor over the Dropbox icon in your system tray?

And can you also confirm that you have the correct system requirements to run Dropbox on your computer after your OS update?

Let me know what you find!

MonikaE

Hovering over the system tray icon doesn't really do anything, but "dropbox status" in the console yields "Synchronizing".

The requirements are fulfilled, it's Ubuntu 20.04 and ext4. (As I don't have GNOME or Xfce there are no icons in the file manager to show the synchronization status, but I don't mind that.)

geirha75

Try dropbox (1) - Linux Man Pages. There are some commands that might be helpful. You can try running some of them from terminal. A friend of mine had same issue, no syncing in Ubuntu 20.04. He used some of the commands provided to start the sync process.

dropbox status
dropbox help [COMMAND]
dropbox puburl FILE
dropbox stop
dropbox running
dropbox start [-i]
dropbox filestatus [-l] [-a] [FILE]...
dropbox ls [FILE]...
dropbox autostart [y/n]
dropbox exclude [list]
dropbox lansync [y/n]

MonikaE

I'm familiar with them (as you see I have just used "dropbox status", but they did not help with the problem.

I have now deleted/moved all local files from the Dropbox folder (I stopped Dropbox before) and restarted Dropbox and now things maybe started working. Now dropbox status does not show "Synchronisieren ..." (Synchronizing ...) but instead shows "Synchronisierung läuft (191.369 Dateien • 20 Std.)
191.369 Dateien werden heruntergeladen (0,0 KB/Sek., 20 Std.)" meaning "Synchronization is running/in progress" and the time and number of files.

But I'm worried about the "0,0 KB/Second" speed. We will see. The folder structure has already been downloaded and a few small files.

MonikaE

At first the solution with deleting/moving all local files seemed to have worked fine, everything was downloaded after a day, the Dropbox icon stopped blinking, the "dropbox status" said "Aktualisiert", which may mean "current".

Now after a reboot of the computer (not sure if that is responsible) the Dropbox icon is blinking again, "dropbox status" yields "Synchronisieren ..." like it did when it was not actually synchronizing anything, the "recently changed files" submenu shows nothing. The folder with the automatic camera uploads from the phone shows photos from yesterday but not from today.

I'm afraid I'm back at square 1. I can't keep deleting and redownloading all my files and remembering which ones I have edited on my PC in the meantime to copy them back.

Hannah

Thanks for the update on this, @MonikaE!

Can you please try a more advanced reinstall of the Dropbox application, to see if that helps?

Also make sure to try and temporarily disable any third party apps like an antivirus or firewall that you may have.

MonikaE

Please check my initial post, I did the advanced reinstall before posting the question.

As usual on Linux, I am not running any antivirus or firewall.

But thanks for the suggestions anyway.

MonikaE

In /var/log/syslog.1 I found three entries like these:

"Jun 25 22:06:47 lilly Â”‚»[34300]: Unable to monitor entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Please run "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" and restart Dropbox to fix the problem."

(with differing special characters before 34300).

I've tried the command and restarted Dropbox. For a few second I thought the situation had improved, because now the submenu "recently changed files" showed some files. But now everything is as before.

By the way the submenu "snooze notifications" doesn't load most of the time (it should show 30 minutes, 1 hour and until tomorrow). That was already so before I used the command.

dropbox filestatus * shows "unwatched" for all files (both before and after trying the above command). I have not unselected any subfolders from synchronization in the settings.

MonikaE

~/.dropbox-dist$ strace ./dropboxd

yields a lot of output like this mentioning "The resource is currently not available":

futex(0x7f5c79e00e94, FUTEX_WAIT_BITSET_PRIVATE, 0, {tv_sec=5279, tv_nsec=506637588}, FUTEX_BITSET_MATCH_ANY)
= -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
futex(0x7f5c79e00ee8, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f5c79e00e98, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 0
recvmsg(24, {msg_namelen=0}, 0)         = -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
poll([{fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, events=POLLIN}, {fd=24,
events=POLLIN}], 5, 499) = 1 ([{fd=14, revents=POLLIN}])
read(14, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 16)        = 8
write(29, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 😎        = 8
futex(0x7f5bb000dd70, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
recvmsg(24, {msg_namelen=0}, 0)         = -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
poll([{fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, events=POLLIN}, {fd=24,
events=POLLIN}], 5, 487) = 0 (Timeout)
futex(0x7f5c79e00e90, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f5c79e00e98, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
write(29, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 😎        = 8

I'm not sure if this is meaningful or indicates a problem.

MonikaE

It's working again.

I ran ~/.dropbox-dist$ strace -f ./dropboxd.

It often showed ("Vorgang nicht zulässig" = "activity not allowed"):

I moved the entire folder Videobearbeitung out of the Dropbox folder be on the safe side and restarted Dropbox.

(The weird thing is that I had deleted all local files at one point and Dropbox had downloaded them - including the offending one.)

The "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" probably also was part of the solution.

Hannah

Hey Monika, thanks for keeping us updated.

Happy to see that you were able to resolve this.

This info might also prove useful to other users who may come across this issue, so we really appreciate it.

Make sure to let us know if you need anything else!

pierpiotr

Hi MonikaE,

I have the exact same problem stemming for the same background (upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04), but trying your solution here is what I get :

pier@pier-Buroo:~/.dropbox-dist$ ~/.dropbox-dist$ strace -f ./dropboxd.
bash: /home/pier/.dropbox-dist$: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type

meaning: No such file or folder of this type

What did I do wrong ?

MonikaE

The command is like this:
cd .dropbox-dist
strace -f ./dropboxd

pierpiotr

@MonikaEthanks,

But I get this :

Unable to monitor entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Please run "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" and restart Dropbox to fix the problem.

I did as suggested but to no avail. Do you have an idea ?

MonikaE

Have a look at the file /etc/sysctl.conf. Is there an entry "fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000"? And no other entry with "fs.inotify.max_user_watches=..."?

pierpiotr

Here is what I have :

vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000
fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000

MonikaE

One of the entries would be enough , but having two identical ones is probably not a problem.

Did you restart Dropbox afterwards?

Did the strace give you any “activity not allowed” errors, like it did for me?

pierpiotr

Yes I re-started dropbox,

The strace command returned no error.

MonikaE

Then your problem must be different from the one I had.

You can try moving all files to a folder outside the Dropbox folder, see if things start working and then move them back in little by little.