You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox isn't syncing anymore after upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04
I upgraded from Kubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 a little over a week ago. Since then Dropbox isn't syncing anymore. The icon in the task bar keeps switching between the network folder icon and the box icon (Dropbox logo), as if it were really busy up- or downloading something. But nothing actually goes up or down. (E.g. I verified that photos have been uploaded from my phone by checking on the web interface, but they don't come down to my PC. Likewise I created a new file on the PC and it does not show up on the web interface.) When clicking on the menu > "Recently changed files" there is nothing there in the submenu.
I have tried: Uninstalling Dropbox, deleting the settings folders .dropbox, .dropbox-dist and (in the Dropbox folder) .dropbox.cache, reinstalling from the Ubuntu repository, reinstalling from the *.deb file that can be downloaded from the Dropbox website (there was a dependency problem but this https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs-integrations/Unable-to-install-Dropbox-on-Ubuntu-20-04/td-p/405158 helped with that), using apt purge, rebooting during the process, following https://help.dropbox.com/en-US/installs/advanced-reinstall, removing the device from the "Security" settings via the Dropbox website ... no change. The icon keeps blinking, nothing goes up or down.
What else can I try? Any logs I can look at?
- It's working again.I ran ~/.dropbox-dist$ strace -f ./dropboxd.[pid 8640] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/monika/Data/Dropbox/Dateien/programme/Videobearbeitung/software/otr-verwaltung3p/data/tools/intern-VirtualDub/wine/dosdevices/z:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/legal/java.compiler", O_RDONLY|O_NOATIME|O_CLOEXEC|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 EPERM (Vorgang nicht zulässig) zu sehen
(The weird thing is that I had deleted all local files at one point and Dropbox had downloaded them - including the offending one.)
The "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" probably also was part of the solution.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey MonikaE, thanks for reaching out!
Can you actually check the sync status of the Dropbox app, by hovering your cursor over the Dropbox icon in your system tray?
And can you also confirm that you have the correct system requirements to run Dropbox on your computer after your OS update?
Let me know what you find!Hovering over the system tray icon doesn't really do anything, but "dropbox status" in the console yields "Synchronizing".
The requirements are fulfilled, it's Ubuntu 20.04 and ext4. (As I don't have GNOME or Xfce there are no icons in the file manager to show the synchronization status, but I don't mind that.)
Try dropbox (1) - Linux Man Pages. There are some commands that might be helpful. You can try running some of them from terminal. A friend of mine had same issue, no syncing in Ubuntu 20.04. He used some of the commands provided to start the sync process.
dropbox status dropbox help [COMMAND] dropbox puburl FILE dropbox stop dropbox running dropbox start [-i] dropbox filestatus [-l] [-a] [FILE]... dropbox ls [FILE]... dropbox autostart [y/n] dropbox exclude [list] dropbox lansync [y/n]
In /var/log/syslog.1 I found three entries like these:
"Jun 25 22:06:47 lilly ”‚»[34300]: 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."
(with differing special characters before 34300).
I've tried the command and restarted Dropbox. For a few second I thought the situation had improved, because now the submenu "recently changed files" showed some files. But now everything is as before.
By the way the submenu "snooze notifications" doesn't load most of the time (it should show 30 minutes, 1 hour and until tomorrow). That was already so before I used the command.
dropbox filestatus * shows "unwatched" for all files (both before and after trying the above command). I have not unselected any subfolders from synchronization in the settings.
~/.dropbox-dist$ strace ./dropboxd
yields a lot of output like this mentioning "The resource is currently not available":
futex(0x7f5c79e00e94, FUTEX_WAIT_BITSET_PRIVATE, 0, {tv_sec=5279, tv_nsec=506637588}, FUTEX_BITSET_MATCH_ANY)
= -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
futex(0x7f5c79e00ee8, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f5c79e00e98, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 0
recvmsg(24, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
poll([{fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, events=POLLIN}, {fd=24,
events=POLLIN}], 5, 499) = 1 ([{fd=14, revents=POLLIN}])
read(14, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 16) = 8
write(29, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 😎 = 8
futex(0x7f5bb000dd70, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
recvmsg(24, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Die Ressource ist zur Zeit nicht verfügbar)
poll([{fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, events=POLLIN}, {fd=24,
events=POLLIN}], 5, 487) = 0 (Timeout)
futex(0x7f5c79e00e90, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f5c79e00e98, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
write(29, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 😎 = 8I'm not sure if this is meaningful or indicates a problem.
- It's working again.I ran ~/.dropbox-dist$ strace -f ./dropboxd.[pid 8640] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/monika/Data/Dropbox/Dateien/programme/Videobearbeitung/software/otr-verwaltung3p/data/tools/intern-VirtualDub/wine/dosdevices/z:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/legal/java.compiler", O_RDONLY|O_NOATIME|O_CLOEXEC|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 EPERM (Vorgang nicht zulässig) zu sehen
(The weird thing is that I had deleted all local files at one point and Dropbox had downloaded them - including the offending one.)
The "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" probably also was part of the solution.
