Syncing is stuck on my Linux devices, what can I do?

Hi @holf,

At the beginning you can try fix possible permission errors:

sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox"
sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox"
chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox

Also, existing symbolic links could be found using:

ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "

If no any change, check the needs for watchable entries:

i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i

The above will give you some estimation. The current upper border could be received using:

sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

If the estimation above don't fit in last result, try extend the border using something like:

sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000

Tune the value according your needs (with some reserve, of course).

If nothing helps yet, try to find out the exact files making troubles (which will give you chance investigate further), using something like:

(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"

Last command assume you have installed properly 'dropbox' command, either using debian package or by hand. Otherwise "command not found" will be signaled. Will be enumerated all folders in Dropbox and signaled problematic files inside, if any. Be patient, could take some time, depending on your content size. Once found out problematic entries, you can use different techniques for investigate, like see current file's classic attributes (the simplest one):

ls -l ~/Dropbox/Troublesome/file.ext

Good luck.

All comments

Hi @Jaidan B.,

Hmm... 🤔 That sounds like you have triggered some bug. It's known that Dropbox application isn't the most stable one. 🤷

Try to workaround by downloading missing files while the application is off. In addition you can clear the cache. Start with following in terminal:

dropbox stop
rm -rf ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache

Above command points to default Dropbox folder place. If you have moved it somewhere else replace tilde (~) to the actual path. Now try to download missing files into proper directories using your web browser. At the end, run Dropbox application anew using:

dropbox start

Is everything Ok now? 🧐

Sorry about the multiple posts - it marked them as spam when I first posted them. It looks like that has been fixed.

Thanks again @Здравко for your ideas. They are clever ones. I chose 3 files which were missing. I stopped dropbox. Cleared the cache. Checked with `dropbox status` and then downloaded the files to the correct location. They looked like they copied correctly.

Then I started Dropbox. Dropbox renamed the 3 files as conflicted copies. The original files are still not there and Dropbox now says "Uploading 3 files, downloading 87 files". It is stuck again. The 3 new conflicts appear in the web browser also.

When I deleted the three new conflicts form the web browser, they deleted from my PC. Still stuck at "Uploading 3, downloading 87".

This is really puzzling. Do you have more ideas please?

Hah.. 🤷 Really puzzling!

Ok, try off repeat the same as above, but just before starting Dropbox application anew remove all already copied to local Dropbox folder files from Dropbox online using your browser. Let's hope when there is only one copy to sync (from local to online), won't be any conflict condition.

Let's see...

This is bizarre. I tried as you said and yes that worked however, the number of "Downloding files" did not reduce by the missing number of files I moved across. It was less, but it still reduced.

Interestingly, if I download from web, then delete from web, the "Downloading X files" reduces a little. When I then copy the downloaded files into the local copy, it syncs perfectly.

This will work for me for now however, I won't know if I will stop all stuck downloading files until I make my way through everything. Some folders have 800 photos in them so checking line by line will take some time.

Thanks for your help @Здравко .

Do you know what the correct way to report this behavior to Dropbox would be?

Oh and an interesting thing, when I download multiple files from the web, the zip file contains a folder called __MACOSX and files with ._ as the second and third letters. These aren't shown in my Dropbox folder or in the web view.

Hi @Jaidan B.,

All Dropbox moderators are able to see our conversation and forward to development if they decide to. The only more thing you can try open a support ticket, but... don't rely too much. 🤷 There are almost same persons. Do as you decide.

Dropbox folder ZIP compression isn't consistent and that's why you should be careful! The bug was signaled multiple times, but seems this isn't a Dropbox priority. It's so for years, so don't rely for this also. All actual files are compressed and exist properly, but folder structure does NOT match reliably the real one! May be different "distortions", starting from misscapitalization up to parallel folders structure, as well as the note by you and so on.

Let's hope someday all this will get fixed.

PS: By the way, why are you checking line by line:

@Jaidan B. wrote:
... Some folders have 800 photos in them so checking line by line will take some time.
...

You can filter the `dropbox filestatus` output for the particular folder and... 🤷 it's ready. 😉 (as I have done in my script above)

Another way to check for missing entries in particular folder is using a single line script like:

VAR=`curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder --header 'Authorization: Bearer <your token>' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{"path":"<path realtive to Dropbox>"}'`; for i in $(seq 0 $((`echo $VAR | jq -r '.entries | length'`-1))); do E=`echo $VAR | jq -r '.entries['$i'].name'`; if [[ -f "$E" || -d "$E" ]]; then echo "E->$E"; else echo "M->$E"; fi; done

To use above script you have to take a short time token from Dropbox API Explorer for example. Click "Get Token" button there and replace <your token> above to the actual token. Get in folder you want to check (i.e. the folder have to be PWD). Replace <path relative to Dropbox> to ... that value (i.e. if you have a folder like "~/Dropbox/My folder" between the quote above should be "/My folder"). All existing entries on the server folder will be listed and prepend with "E->" (i.e. Exists) when particular entry exists locally in PWD or prepend with "M->" (i.e. Missing) otherwise. 🙂

barefootcoder

> The only more thing you can try open a support ticket, but... don't rely too much.

Good advice. Before I found this thread and solved my own problem, I had Dropbox "support" close my ticket 4 times without ever coming remotely close to solving my problem. They should be paying Здравко; they'd solve more issues.

cnelsonak

I had this same issue with my Linux Dropbox (Dropbox daemon version: 144.4.4491, Dropbox command-line interface version: 2020.03.04). Certain files in Linux would not show up even though they were available online and on other computers. Trying to copy them did not resolve and trying to recreate them would cause sync errors. Only downloading, removing from online, and re-uploading seemed to fix. I tried all the other remediation steps (max_user_watches; rm .dropbox folder; complete reinstall) without any luck.

In the end, this post helped me identify the culprit -- all the files in question had a __MACOSX folder when I downloaded and I realized that they were synced from a very old Mac computer. So, I dusted it off and checked the files for extended attributes, and all of the files that were not syncing had a com.apple.ResourceFork as an extended attribute. If I removed the ResourceFork attribute, the file would immediately sync and appear on the Linux Dropbox folder. Since I was missing 3K+ files, I decided to bulk remove the attribute for the entire Dropbox directory and now all my files are showing up again on the Linux workstation. The only downside to removing the attribute this way (using xattr -d) was that it updated the timestamps.

I hope this helps anyone who has this odd issue. It appears that there is a bug or incompatibility between the Linux client and the old Mac ResourceFork file attribute.

Good find! Come to think of it, all the files I had that were stuck syncing were on an old iBook. Hopefully Dropbox can use this info to provide a permanent fix.

Walter

Hi all - I'm sorry for the late response here. Are you still having issues with this?

If you do, note that files won't sync if the device's filesystem does not support the particular xattr (size) or if doesn't support xattrs at all.

You can take a look at this page for additional details on xattr limitations on Linux filesystems.

I hope this helps!

tayloredwebsites

I found the sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox" command very enlightening, as it listed two files as "Operation not supported while reading flags on ..."

When looking at these two files on the dropbox website, I got error 415 on both of them, with an indication that someone will look at them.

So I will wait and see what happens.

Thanks for the instructions

I have tried everything i can find anywhere to get dropbox working correctly on Ubuntu 20.04.

I even flushed a machine and rebuilt it. Same problem.

I am using to to synch between my dev machine and a hosted Ubuntu 20.04.

Up until last week, it had no problems whatsoever.

Now, it goes into "Indeexing" and never finishes, ever.

Any ideas?

barefootcoder

My personal solution was to cancel my Dropbox account and buy a Synology NAS. I've never been happier. Synology support actually helps you with problems, as opposed to just closing the ticket without doing anything. Highly recommended.

After having similar issues, my end result was use my Dropbox subscription money to buy an extra hard disk and install OMV on my server. I haven’t been happier.

Hi all!

There may be different reasons Dropbox application not to work and refuse to sync some files. Sometimes it's result from some third party app behavior that sets files in such a way that other application (including Dropbox) cannot work correctly. There are many bugs, in the Dropbox application itself though, that lead to such a behavior too. Long time ago one such bug was discussed in details, but seems the discussion is removed (or I cannot find it already). I tried to put a link here, but... 🤷 Probably Dropbox staff is not happy when information for unsolved bug persist on the forum and that's why it's wiped out. In short - different Dropbox applications put on some files attributes (not only local extended, it's happens on Dropbox server) that are able to confuse another application instances. These are attributes that only some application understand, but probably by mistake, spread to all applications and make some of them behave strange. That looks like a conceptual bug of Dropbox application design - something that Dropbox' staff refuse to accept 🤦 unfortunately and as seems fix wont be provided. This happens most often for files (or possible for some of them) that are added from Dropbox application on Mac and have to be in sync with some Linux machine. Sometimes Dropbox application on Mac adds file' properties that confuse Dropbox application on Linux (I havent seen such issue with files that come from Windows, not yet at least). Something I observe is that files are synced locally and immediately removed after that (file browser cannot even see them actually). And since the file is still not in sync, the application tries to download it anew. At the end everything repeats anew - in a loop. This loop can take some time and (in my case) finally the tries to sync stop. The files are available online, but are missing locally:

изображение.png

I think many of reported cases here full or partial match to this/my case.

As I said Dropbox staff completely refuse to take care for this BUG and you should not rely such thing to happen. The only way (that I know about) to be solved such issue is downloading of all affected files and sync them back to the server. Users don't have direct access to these file properties and cannot wipe them out (alone, without wiping the file out). Care should be taken because sync conflicts are possible. For small number of files download by hands can be a good way, but for large number using a script that automates this is advisable (otherwise may take "forever"). If such an issue is rare/exception, solving it periodically my be some way, but if this happens too often, looking for another service may be a good choice (as some have already done). 🤫

Good luck!

I have been using dropbox for ages to synch datasets across multiple machines. up until monday of this week, i had zero issues with ubutnu 20.10.

in order to try to debug it, i created a fresh ubuntu 20.10 VMware machine which has the exact same results.

this is only occuring on fresh new installs, my existing ubuntu machines synching with windows have zero issues still.

i have even tried copying over every single dropbox related file from an existing machine that works to one that does nto work.

i have gone through all of the recommended stesp from this forum and anywhere else i can find dropbox ubuntu 20/10 issues.

nada. zippo. it stays stuck on indexing.

# to remove dropbox completely:
dropbox stop
dropbox status
# Should report "not running"
rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove -y nautilus-dropbox dropbox
sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME" && sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox && sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox

# dropbox install
cat /etc/sysctl.conf
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p
# echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=500000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt autoremove -y && dropbox autostart y

that is what i have been doing forever and now it doesnt work on ubuntu 20.04

any ideas?

@silvacarl wrote:
...
in order to try to debug it, i created a fresh ubuntu 20.10 VMware machine which has the exact same results.

this is only occuring on fresh new installs, my existing ubuntu machines synching with windows have zero issues still.
...
sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME" && sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox && sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox
...

@silvacarl, Fresh install? 🤔 In such a case where comes this Dropbox folder from, that you try change associated user and mode to? 😀

Try sync everything on fresh and trace what's going on to see where the behavior goes wrong and how. This will let you debug your issue further on. You may be interested in: are the files going to start sync at all; if only some of them has troubles, what's the common between all files that can't sync, etc...

Hope this gives direction.

By the way, when you're going on fresh, don't do meaningless things. Just install the Dropbox application in the regular way, without meaningless steps. Also, the package you're using (nautilus-dropbox) is obsolete (it keeps place there just for back compatibility); use the actual one. You can download a such from here. Once downloaded, install it as follows:

sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
dropbox start -i

That's enough. Don't try newer packages, since they're incompatible!!! (one more Dropbox stupidness) Newer packages are for Gtk4 based distributions only (something that miss in documentation - something normal for Dropbox). Ubuntu 20.04 is Gtk3 based (the same for 22.04). Gtk4 are from 22.10 on.

Observe with care what's going on in the terminal output where you ran Dropbox (don't close it). There will be some application output and possibly some error messages that may give some directions what's going wrong (not mandatory, but possible). Correct whatever needed and try anew to observe.

Do the things in the easiest possible way (without meaningless steps), so gonna be easier to trace what's going on.

Good luck.

Do you have a tool that can find a file that is stuck? In other words, I am 99% certain that the issue is that a file on windows is causing it to be stuck on “Indexing” on Ubuntu 20.04

How can I find that file?

Carl

🙂 If you're aware what exactly it is, I believe something could be found. There isn't something that can solve everything (i.e. some kind of magic).

If you ask for the issue, I described above, your issue (in particular) seems different, so no I don't have anything. In my case the troublesome files cannot sync to any Linux machine, not just to some.

yeah the only way i can see to fix this is to remove anything that was added after 10/08/23 from Windows 11 and then install fresh on Ubuntu 20.04 to see if the problem is fixed.

if not, then i delete the current Dropbox subscription i have and create a new one with a new logins, etc., since i have copies/backups of everything anyways to be on the safe side.

also, thank you for your ideas.

carl

So it turns out there was some stuck file someplace. so i had to create a new dropbox account and need to slowly migrate everything over to it.

i find it bizarre that after thhis many years, there is no method or tool by which to identify these problems and do somethihng about it.

it makes zero sense.

@silvacarl, If the only thing that you're looking for is isolation of all files which status is not up to date, then following command can do this:

find ~/Dropbox -type d,f,l -exec dropbox filestatus '{}' ';' | grep -iv "up to date"

Of course, if your Dropbox' folder position is different, adapt the path. Not necessary something different than "up to date" be troublesome mandatory (some files normal are not in sync), but you will have a relatively short list (let's hope) to look in and find actual troublesome files. For huge number of files this check will take some time, so be patient. You shouldn't expect this to solve something - it just shows status. Dropbox application should work during this command execution.

well, without a doubt something weird/corrupted was in my dropbox. there are no tools to find something like this.

in order to fix the problem, i created a new dropbox account and gave it some test files.

it was insanely fast and now works perfectly.

so i am in the process of moving files over.

if you know of a simple/easy way to move entire directories from one dropbox account to anotehr let me know.

once i have moved everything over that i want, i will kill/deactivate my old account which i have had for years !!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s. threre is/was no other way to fix this problem. which is really odd, given the fact dropbox has been around for ages. makes zero sense to me at all.

also, this method is much better/more reliable to install on ubuntu 20.04:

# use URL to drowndload latest install kit
https://linux.dropboxstatic.com/packages/ubuntu/
https://linux.dropbox.com/packages/ubuntu/dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
dropbox start -i

than this one:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd