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Unnecessary sync after change auf harddisk on the app.

Hello,

I just changed my data harddisk. It's a Linux system and I just moved the /home directory to a new harddisk. The system runs fine, but Dropbox does not recognise that the cloud storage and the local Dropbox folder have the same content, so it just started to download, saying that this would take several days. I checked the folder configuration, everythings seems to be alright.

What can I do to stop that nonsense?

Thanks!

Martin

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Здравко

@elroy690 wrote:
...
When I let the whole sync process run through, everything will be back to normal afterwards?
...

Yes. As I said, the application uploads everything anew. This doesn't mean that every file will be updated; Dropbox server, on its own, checks out and if nothing changed (the file is the same) upload is ignored. So, almost everything, if not everything, gonna be ignored. At the end, for every single file, correct extended attribute(s) (one or more; one in most cases) becomes set to every single file anew and that's all.

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Megan

Hi @elroy690, thanks for posting here today!

It seems you might chose for the content to sync anew to the device, that's why the app is syncing all the content. On the other hand, maybe the app is re-indexing any changes, and not syncing the files.

Do you have two Dropbox folders on the device? An old, and a new one?

Could you clarify the app's precise syncing status, please? Also, feel free to have a look at this thread, and let me know if you can follow the steps Rich provided.

Keep me posted!

elroy690

Hi!

No, Dropbox is really syncing, not indexing. It says it's uploading and downloading files.

Yes, I have two Dropbox folders, but I renamed the old one, so this shouldn't be a problem, should it? It's a Linux system and I put set /home directory to the new drive, so actually Dropbox shouldn't even notice that something is different, cause I copied the whole /home content to the new drive.

Any ideas?

elroy690

I am just shredding the drive now, so it cannot be accessed by Dropbox any more. So the second folder cannot be the problem. Just mentioning. 😉

Thanks!

Jay

Hi @elroy690, as it seems that the Dropbox desktop application doesn't detect this to be the same location, we can only recommend to allow the app to continue syncing the files down to your machine in the new location.

Здравко

@elroy690 wrote:
... I have two Dropbox folders, but I renamed the old one, so this shouldn't be a problem, should it? It's a Linux system and I put set /home directory to the new drive, so actually Dropbox shouldn't even notice that something is different, cause I copied the whole /home content to the new drive.
...

Hi @elroy690,

When you say that your home folder is on new drive, does it mean you have moved its location and it's accessible on new absolute path or you just remounted another drive on the same place - the home folder? This is important since Dropbox keep absolute paths internally! So if this move implies change absolute path of Dropbox folder, it can be an issue. You can see where Dropbox expect application folder to reside using:

jq .personal.path ~/.dropbox/info.json

... or something similar. Does the result match to the position expected by you?

Another corner case may be the way you have used to copy you home folder content (including Dropbox folder content). Dropbox relies on files timestamp and extended attributes to identify current sync status. If some of them has been changed (or reset) during your copy, application assumes there are files need sync (since it cannot identify what's going on)! Using standard Linux tools, coming with most big distributions, usually doesn't lead to such issues, but as I said if your tool changed something entire Dropbox content may need to be re-upload (so the application makes sure everything is in sync even when it's not needed). In such a situation, as Jay said, just let application do its work (next time perform the copy more carefully, so application doesn't fall in confusion 😉).

Hope this helps clarifying the situation.

elroy690

Hello,

martin@martin-workstation:~$ jq .personal.path ~/.dropbox/info.json
"/home/martin/Dropbox"
martin@martin-workstation:~$

That's what the jq command put out. And yes, I expected that.

What I did was, I remountend the /home folder to another drive, and before I copied the whole content with rsync, which is a standard linux tool and should work fine. I don't think the rsync command changes anything. Do you?

Any ideas from reading my lines?

Thank you.

Здравко

Hi @elroy690,

Yes, you have done mounting in the proper way. 😉

@elroy690 wrote:
... I copied the whole content with rsync, which is a standard linux tool and should work fine. I don't think the rsync command changes anything. Do you?
...

😁 Yes rsync is useful tool, but the "evil" is in details! How exactly you ran rsync? Yes, rsync support extended attributes, but such feature is NOT active if no explicitly turn on. So if you haven't done it, that's why your Dropbox application got in confusion (by default rsync drops extended attributes). 🙋

Next time take care. 😉

elroy690

Ok, thanks for clarifying!

When I let the whole sync process run through, everything will be back to normal afterwards?

Thanks.

Здравко

@elroy690 wrote:
...
When I let the whole sync process run through, everything will be back to normal afterwards?
...

elroy690

Great, thanks a lot!