The Dropbox app on one of my connected macOS devices is unusable after unlink-relink

robderon

Sorry guys, this one is a bit long, but my dropbox is now totally unusable on my production computer, and I don't know how to fix. I'm on a mac mini 2023 under sonoma 14.5 , dropbox latest version downloaded today.

STATE BEFORE PROBLEM :

Dropbox installed on this mac mini in 2023, dropbox sync works very well between 4 clients.
My dropbox folder was in ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox but also accessible from ~/Dropbox , and without FileProvider activated in Dropbox. Maybe my files were in CloudStorage because dropbox forced fileprovider when i've installed it, and then i've said no. Not sure of this, but i'm quite sure i was not using fileprovider, and that i could use both paths to use my dropbox, everything was well synced.

THE EVENT THAT TRIGGERED THE WHOLE MESS :

after some big zip files uploads from another client, uncompressing, deleting them (maybe before they were fully synced on my mac), i saw a " .txt" file listed as to be synced in dropbox app, with only spaces in its name, that were not visible anywhere locally or on dropbox web, but could not get synced after restart / reboots. I've decided to log out / log in from dropbox this i guess triggered a re-association of my dropbox folder, as before in ~/Dropbox. I mention this time dropbox app said I was not eligible to fileprovider ( I wouldn't have opt in anyway)

THEN THE FALLOUT :

i keep working for 3 hours after the re-association. to realize that ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox and ~/Dropbox where not in sync anymore. files created directly in ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox where available only locally, never synced. they were also appearing in ~/Dropbox , but with size 0 !! files i was working with in ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox became empty files in ~/Dropbox.

-> I decide to uninstall dropbox, make backups of all my new unsynced work since log out/log in, rename ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox to ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox.old from terminal with sudo so that it's not used by system anymore, empty ~/Dropbox , reinstall fresh dropbox, choosing only a few folders to sync.

AND THE FRIGHTENING STATE MY DROPBOX IS NOW :

After reinstall, folder i've chosen to sync came back to my ~/Dropbox folder.
But now, inside ~/Dropbox/, new folders created via mkdir appear in ls listings but are ghost entries:
cd returns no such file or directory
touch /file.txt returns no such file or directory
The new folders lack the @ extended attribute that all Dropbox-tracked items have
the files are not synced.
Quitting the Dropbox app immediately fixes the filesystem : newly created folders correctly receive the @ xattr and become writable.

I Cannot work in such a fragile state anymore. I've migrated my production files out of dropbox. I've stop dropbox sync on my other computers by fear of loosing files. I've bought a NAS, wait so that i'm able to backup important file somewhere else, but I need to fix my dropbox install on this machine !!

Thank you in advance for any help you could provide

Hannah

Thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community about this, @robderon.

This is indeed a tricky situation, so let's see what we can find.

First of all, I wanted to mention that the initial way you were working (both Dropbox folders syncing in both ~/Library/CloudsStorage/Dropbox and ~/Dropbox) was not how the Dropbox app is supposed to work.

Unless you have both a persona and a Dropbox team account linked to the device, the Dropbox app can only be linked/synced to one Dropbox folder.

I'm assuming that after you logged out and back into the app (unlinked/relinked), that triggered the actual way the app should work, although not ideal in your case.

If you hover over the Dropbox icon in your menu bar, what do you see?

Also, if you go to the app's preferences, what is shown as the location of the Dropbox folder in the "sync" tab?

Let me know and we'll go from there.