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Forum Discussion
dropbox hangs on "starting..." in Manjaro and in Fedora 38
currently on Fedora 38, using dropbox installed from Fedora 38 RPM at https://linux.dropbox.com/fedora/38/x86_64/
Observed behavior: Dropbox hangs on "starting"'
Theory: there is something in my Dropbox folder that is hanging Dropbox.
Tried:
Dropbox hangs on "starting". Originally in Manjaro, around May 1, it began to hang when started. Tried fresh reinstall of Dropbox, then fresh reinstall of Manjaro. Once I installed Dropbox on a fresh system, it pulled in all the files without a problem, but when I rebooted, I got the "starting" message again. I thought it might be the maxhandles parameter so set that, but no change.
Rolled back to a fresh install from backup to pre-install state, including config files and no Dropbox folder that I installed and had working until reboot. That still hung on "starting...."
Deleted Dropbox folder, config, and app, from my home folder as per https://help.dropbox.com/installs/uninstall-dropbox, Installed Fedora 38 and Fedora 38 dropbox version from https://linux.dropbox.com/fedora/38/x86_64/, and once I followed the instructions to install topicon to get an appindicator, I was able to set selective sync so it would not download everything, but it froze on starting. Reboot led to same result.
* full remove of dropbox, including Dropbox folder, install from fedora nautilus dropbox rpm at
* install rpm through software gui, it updates itself and starts up, starts syncing everything. no app indicator shows., so no way to get to prefs for selective sync.
* reboot. Dropbox starts automatically, app indicator shows, but stuck on starting again.
I got some help from support. The key piece was to run "chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox" which revealed the problem files. I had created symbolic links from my dotfile settings in .config, .themes, and .local and placed the actual files in dropbox folders so that some of my settings would get backed up to dropbox. One of the applications put unchangeable files in dropbox and that is what caused the problems. Since I reinstalled fresh, once I was able to find the problem files via chattr and move them out of Dropbox, syncing resumed and is now fixed.
PS, syncs fine on Win 10 box.
yes, once the indicator appeared I was able to set the sync to a single folder for test purposes. The process never gets beyond "starting..." to index anything though. rebooted after that so that the system started fresh with the single folder sync, same thing. Exclude on command line did not work because Dropbox is hanging at start and not accepting any input.. I'm on the woindows box right now, so I will give some error messages a second reply.
