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Dropbox "Starting..." for days on Ubuntu 22.04

I've installed the Dropbox command line version following the instructions on https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux

This is a 64 bit install on Ubuntu 22.04:

uname -a
Linux redacted 5.15.0-91-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 14 13:30:08 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The client started and spent a long time "indexing" until it finally started syncing. At that time I set a large number of files to be "excluded" as they are not needed on the server.

The installation was authenticated to a user and when I go to the Dropbox website and look into the Account > Security area I can see in the "devices" that this machine has connected within the last few hours. But it seems to stall out after a while and the most recent activity becomes hours ago and then a day ago.

What can I do to troubleshoot?

Would it be helpful to stop and start the dropbox daemon if I notice it has stopped reporting as online to the Dropbox website?

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greg-knaddison

As it gets set up, the computer is not currently running antivirus, firewall, nor vpn/proxy.

When running dropbox start there was a message that appeared shortly after starting:

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.

While I had done that change, I found that running sysctl fs.inotify showed the fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 100000 was already set. On the machine where Dropbox currently works, I found we had the max_user_watches set to 10000000. Changing that value on this new server and rebooting seems to have gotten us past the Starting... status and now it is Indexing...

I'm hopeful it will get beyond Indexing in the next day and be able to finish Syncing.

All comments

Walter

Hey @greg-knaddison - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Of course it'd be helpful to quit and relaunch the Dropbox app on the machine you noticed on or even reboot the machine itself as well.

If you still have issues with this though, please send us the app's exact status and version so that we can troubleshoot further.

Thanks!

greg-knaddison

The version:

username@redacted:~/Dropbox$ dropbox version
Dropbox daemon version: 189.4.8395
Dropbox command-line interface version: 2023.09.06
username@redacted:~/Dropbox$

The exact status (please tell me if there is a better way to get it):

username@redacted:~/Dropbox$ dropbox status
Starting...
username@redacted:~/Dropbox$

I'll give it a reboot now.

greg-knaddison

It has rebooted and is still in the same status. When it starts I get this output:

dropbox start
Starting Dropbox...dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._openssl.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._padding.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/apex._apex.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/psutil._psutil_linux.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/psutil._psutil_posix.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/tornado.speedups.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/jenkins/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-189.4.8395/wrapt._wrappers.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
Done!

And then after that the "dropbox status" says "Starting..."

Walter

Thanks for the update @greg-knaddison

Do you happen to be running any 3rd party apps like antivirus or firewalls, or VPN/proxy settings on your machine?

If so, could you temporarily disable them and let me know how it goes?

greg-knaddison

As it gets set up, the computer is not currently running antivirus, firewall, nor vpn/proxy.

When running dropbox start there was a message that appeared shortly after starting:

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'm hopeful it will get beyond Indexing in the next day and be able to finish Syncing.

Hannah

Thanks for the update on this, @greg-knaddison.

Hopefully, that will work and syncing will finish for you, but if you're still running into any issues, let us know!