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Is LAN sync functional on the Mac OS version of Dropbox? How can I tell it is working?

Hello,

I have a drobox of about 800gb and when I added a Macbook Pro 2015 to dropbox it has been syncing for about 5 days and still has 750gb to go. My M1 Macbook Pro on the same hardwired network is fully up to date.

1) Even without LAN sync I would have expected it to be way farther along since I have a 1G fiber connection to the net.

2) I expected LAN sync should have synced everything in a few hours

How can I tell if LAN sync is even working? Why is the download from the cloud so slow?

Any suggestions?

Mark

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Megan

Hi @Mark E.29, let's jump right into this!

You mentioned that you want to check if your LAN connection is working the way it should.

Can you check this article, to make sure the feature is enabled on your app?

Also, you said that you have about 800GB on your Dropbox account, therefore I'd assume you have more than 300K files saved, which would be the soft limit of our app.

Have you chosen for all of them to be synced locally to the device?

Keep me posted!

Mark E.29

The "Enable LAN sync" is checked on both machines. Bandwidth is also set to unlimited in both directions.

Yes, all my files are set for local storage on both devices.

Megan

Hi @Mark E.29, syncing that amount of files locally to the device is a lot of work.

However, like you mentioned it should have proceeded more, but that depends purely on the size of your content and how large these files are.

I would like for you to locate your Dropbox icon, next to your WiFi and hover your mouse there. That should give you the version of the app you're using, can you check?

Mark E.29

167.4.4719 on both of the machines.

Jay

Hi @Mark E.29, are either of the new devices on the new version of the Dropbox desktop application for Mac OS? That version no longer supports LAN sync.

Have you opened up all the ports required for the Dropbox desktop application to work normally? Are you using any proxy, VPN, firewall, security software, or even ISP/router settings that could be restricting traffic to the following Dropbox domains?

Mark E.29

There is nothing on my systems to block traffic to the dropbox domains. You have not actually answered my question. How can tell if LAN sync is working, Are there any log files I can inspect? Any status screens ? Are there logs on your end you can inspect?

Здравко

Hi @Mark E.29,

LAN Sync is no more supported on Mac (scroll down to "LAN Sync is currently not supported on Dropbox for macOS." line in the table) once Dropbox started using Mac specific (and provided by Apple) sync engine and left their own. 🤷 That's it.

Hope this clarifies matter.

Mark E.29

@Здравко Thanks so much for pointing this out. I believe I am still running an older version of dropbox... since my files are not in the ~/Library/CloudStorage location. I wish that post had a date on it... and mentioned the version numbers, etc

I guess I will have to do some sort of local file transfer to get things going.

Dropbox seems to be dropping the ball by dropping features left and right

Mark

out_to_pasture

Yeah, this is a brutal limitation on Dropbox's end for macOS. I surely hope it can be worked around, or at the very least I'd hope to see some clear indication that LAN Sync is not going to work within the application itself on macOS.

Bootstrapping a new system now consumes half of my network quota for the month, and I'm only at ~500GB of my 2TB plan. That is hard to stomach when the data is all here, on my network, with 2.5GbE hardwired lines between everything.

What does Support have to say about this workaround:
1. Disable Dropbox's daemon on my new system

2. `rsync` the directory from my old system to the proper location on my new system
3. Hope Dropbox recognizes everything as "in position", and re-enable the daemon on the new system?

For Dropbox's feature team, y'all could probably implement a similar approach where Dropbox simply runs a bulk copy under the hood and shows a status bar. Call it a "New system local bootstrap" user flow or something and stick it under "Preferences > Advanced" for those who really need the full throughput of local LAN sync on macOS.