The app stopped syncing on Linux (two different machines).

[dushoff]

My dropbox stopped syncing recently on two different linux machines
after restart. I spent hours trying to upgrade the first one before I
restarted the second one and noticed that it had the same problem. Both
stopped working after working fine for months or years. The first one
has been changed a lot since it stopped working, but I can report about
the second one.

The main symptom is that Dropbox doesn’t sync. “dropbox status” returns
“Starting…” even for hours after typing “dropbox start”.

“dropbox start” produces a lot of messages about loading things, but rarely any warnings or errors. Occasionally it warns about fs.inotify.max_user_watches, but this seems bogus: I have only 13000 folders in my Dropbox and the default is 65536. Nonetheless, I increased my fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 200000. This does not make dropbox sync, and it does not always stop the message that I should increase it to 100000.

“dropbox stop” and “dropbox status” also tell me “DeprecationWarning: isSet()”.

I have successfully run “dropbox update” on both machines.

I have also tried to install a .deb directly from Dropbox:

:new_moon: $ sudo gdebi dropbox_2024.04.17_amd64.deb
/usr/bin/gdebi:113: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\S'
c = findall("[[(](\S+)/\S+[])]", msg)[0].lower(
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done
This package is uninstallable
Dependency is not satisfiable: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.40)
)

Here is some more information:

:new_moon: $ lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Release: 24.04
Codename: noble

:new_moon: $ dpkg -l nautilus-dropbox
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-================-====================-============-========================>
ii nautilus-dropbox 2019.02.14-1.2build2 amd64 Dropbox integration for >

[Megan]

Hey @dushoff, welcome to our Community!

It'd be helpful to quit and relaunch the Dropbox app on your machine or even reboot the machine itself as well.

Also, do you happen to be running any 3rd party apps like antivirus or firewalls, or VPN/proxy settings on your machine? If so, could you temporarily disable them and let me know how it goes?

Also, can you please just check if your computer meets the minimum requirements for the Dropbox app to work correctly?

Keep me posted! 

[dushoff]

Thanks for your response.

I have quit and restarted Dropbox multiple times on both machines. I also restarted the first broken machine, then updated linux and restarted it again. The problem started on the second machine when I rebooted it (which I did to test whether this would happen).

I meet all of the requirements, but as my report states I was _not_ able to install the app (on either machine). I am instead using the nautilus-dropbox package (and have been for many years).

I don't have any firewalls or vpns running.

Both machines have been running Dropbox for months without changes before they stopped working in the last few days.

[dushoff]

I also deleted all of my dropbox stuff and tried the "headless" approach. That seems to have installed fine, but has the same problem as all of the other approaches. It just says "Starting..." forever.

[Hannah]

Thanks for the update here, @dushoff.

Can you try our advanced reinstall steps, to see if they help?

[dushoff]

Thanks.

I'll try when I get a chance... already tried most of it. It's not likely that just redoing things will fix anything now that I know that the same problem happened on four stable machines. How do I get diagnostic help?

[Megan]

If you try it, and it doesn't work let me know and we'll switch our communication to email @dushoff!

When you say diagnostic help, would you mind elaborating? 

[dushoff]

I carved out some time and went through all of those steps. As expected, it seems hung in the same way. As not expected, it didn't even ask me to re-set-up my dropbox account.

By "diagnostic help" I meant trying to figure out what is actually going on, since that seems likely to be necessary for a solution.

[dushoff]

A chat person (apparently a bot, but hard to be sure) kept me on the line for 80 minutes the other day, accomplished nothing, and promised an email follow up. There was no email follow up, but I now find that the chat was recorded, tagged "Solved" (my Dropbox is not syncing on four independent machines) and closed. I am now asked to start a new report if I want, but it seems like the system has changed and anyway there is some valuable info (from my side) in those 80 minutes. Is there any way to get that support ticket (ID #24196785) re-opened?

[Nancy]

Hi from me too, @dushoff. I could locate your ticket in our system and I can see that our live support agent sent you an email indeed after the end of your chat, but there was no reply, which is why the ticket was closed automatically after some time.

Are you able to see the ticket, if you open your email address? If yes, you can still attempt to reply back to it and a new ticket (with a new ticket number) will be automatically generated. This way, you don’t have to provide the same info again.