Dropbox "Connecting..." with VPN

[dhayduk]

Been using Dropbox for many years. Normally DB is connected and status is "up to date". And it had been then when I started VPN to the office, that DB would lose connection (not surprising) and would then re-establish the connection. But for the past few updates, the DB icon in the tray is grayed out and the status stays "Connecting...". Sometimes it will even sync any changes that get made (say I upload a picture via my phone), but not always. Proxy is set to AUTO.

Definitely didn't have this problem in earlier versions - just not sure exactly when it started (currently running v127.4.4265 on Windows).

[dhayduk]

And "pausing" and then resuming syncing doesn't fix it either.

Sometimes I can toggle the proxy setting from auto to direct and then back to auto and then it might work. But that's successful maybe 30-50% of the time and so I usually just restart dropbox entirely.

[alturic]

Yep, exact same problem here.

Using OpenVPN.

[alturic]

@Jay Thoughts?

Conditions to reproduce

Be connected to OpenVPN (unsure if this affects other VPNs or not)

Be connected to DropBox

Lose Connection/Reconnect to VPN

DropBox loses internet connection and never regains it.

In my case, it's even crazier DropBox thinks it lost connection to the internet because I don't use my VPN connection for any internet traffic outside of connecting to corporate servers. Pausing/unpausing does nothing, I have to close DropBox and reopen it and it's happy again.

[Megan]

Hi @alturic, I hope you're doing well!

A VPN can cause issues with the connection of the desktop app, one way or another. Maybe not at first, but initially it will.

Now, connection problems usually mean there is a proxy, firewall, antivirus or other type of security program in the way. Can you check that?

Moving forward, the best way for you to get assistance might be to reach out to the company that makes your VPN for support, and ask them about this too. 

[alturic]

Megan,

I don’t believe my ISP or VPN provider can tell us why Dropbox loses connection when connecting to a VPN (although as a developer I can understand vaguely why) NOR would they be able to tell me why Dropbox can never reconnect after it loses connection, outside of closing and reopening Dropbox.

We’ve provided reproducible steps on how your team can track down why Dropbox has this issue, so we will have to wait until Dropbox provides a fix.

[JP25]

I have the same issue and use ProtonVPN. Dropbox icon remains grayed out until I restart the app or disable VPN.

[alturic]

Still no resolution to such a simple issue. Sad. I prefer DropBox to all of the other file management solutions out there too - all of which work completely fine with connecting/disconnecting to VPNs.

And again, in my situation, my VPN is strictly routing a few IP's through it. Anything and everything related to DropBox is always routed through the default LAN connection.

[AtlasJustice]

I have this issue. Using ProtonVPN. Annoying that i have to restart Dropbox on my Mac. Disruptive when i forget to manually restart Dropbox and then my local files don't sync with my partners. Please fix!

[alturic]

You know, I came here to give an update about how I thought it was a specific provider I was trying out at the time, but after reading my comments I was (and still am) using OpenVPN and while I am using the OpenVPN GUI and not their normal app (which is what I was using at the time), I haven't had this issue since.

So it's possibly it's something with the way the actual underlying "app" that performs the connections is doing. I'd suspect that some of the apps (unless they all inherently have to of course) potentially cut all connectivity when it connects/reconnects and that trips up Dropbox.

Like I said, I'm currently using OpenVPN GUI and I haven't had the issue with Dropbox since. Absolutely nothing else has changed on my end since.