URL to link account in Linux does not work

[muxxum]

I'm trying to install in Linux. I have the app installed but when it brings up the URL to link your account to the computer the URL is not valid. It does not work.  I can relaunch dropbox and it brings up another invalid URL.

There is also no options I can find other than this invalid URL to link the account and get dropbox working.

Where can I get a valid URL to link my computer?  How can I make this work?  Or do I need to find another service?

[Sam DBX]

Hi all,

Jumping in here to let you know that we've reported your issue back to our team.

Your tickets will be forwarded to a designated Product Support member, so we can look at the specifics of your build/hardware/account type etc in a safer way, as some of our internal tests don't capture all reports. 

Thanks for working with us!

Sam 

[Здравко]

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@Sam DBX wrote:

..., as some of our internal tests don't capture all reports. 

...

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Hi @Sam DBX,

Do you have such tests at all? 🧐 That would impress me! I have some experience in testing and know that such tests are sophisticated; it's not just to put the code in some condition and expect it to succeed or fail. Here the conditions are external and its very difficult to simulate/emulate such. It's not impossible, but is related to lot of additional design work (design of test environment) and corresponding cost. Usually it's much more cheap/practical to link/unlink every application on release time (for Dropbox, once a week for all variations - 5 at the moment) and see if it works. This will cost no more than half hour for a week from your work time (or from work time of some your colleague). Such testing can be produced at the same time with the automated tests (in parallel from the same person), so no delay may be expected.

Good luck.

[jribeiro]

This is not a solution!

[machias]

This is not solved. I'm having the same issue in Ubuntu, Pop! OS, and Fedora. If I use the command line client to link I get a different link every five seconds. I don't think it used to do that, it used to be the same link over and over.  Something is very wrong here and it's preventing me from attaching a new laptop to my Dropbox account.

Also, I'm on a family account, no limit to three devices for me, and I've confirmed I have no outdated devices attached to my account.

[Allen Lam]

I am in the IT industry. I know how the Support team works. Asking customers to open ticket is the standard tactic to buy time and also to redirect customers' rage and energy to writing up error reports.

It helps nothing in solving the problem.

Do not waste my time by asking me the ultimate details of my hardware, software, config and procedures.

I am preparing to cancel my credit card auto payment to dropbox. There should be a few more months I can use the paid service. That should be good enough to let me download everything and to try out another provider, in case this "Invalid URL" bug is still not fixed when the time comes.

[Megan]

Hi @moksahero, can I send you an email, in order for us to have a closer look into it? 

[Doug S.11]

I'm also hitting this on a fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS.

$ dropbox version
Dropbox daemon version: 179.4.4985
Dropbox command-line interface version: 2019.02.14

[Chebuya]

As temporary workaround we can use https://github.com/samschott/maestral. Works pretty fine.

[DroppyPaul]

SOLVED!!!  Finally!!!

I thought this was a problem with Dropbox's server and that I'd just have to wait until they fixed it.  It turned out not to be the case.  For some reason, using the URL that appears when you do dropbox start at the command line was failing for me because I had the Dropbox pgp key in the legacy trusted.gpg keyring for apt.  I'm certain this was it, because I had the URL fail, then I removed the Dropbox key from the keyring, then I did another dropbox start and tried the new URL and it worked.

Here are the steps I did:

STEP 1: do apt-key list at the command prompt and look at the output.  In my case, part of it mentioned Dropbox while the rest mentioned Ubuntu.  Here's the Dropbox part:

/etc/apt/trusted.gpg
--------------------
pub rsa2048 2010-02-11 [SC]
1C61 A265 6FB5 7B7E 4DE0 F4C1 FC91 8B33 5044 912E
uid [ unknown] Dropbox Automatic Signing Key <linux@dropbox.com>

STEP 2: remove the Dropbox pgp key from the (deprecated) trusted keyring:

apt-key del 1C61 A265 6FB5 7B7E 4DE0 F4C1 FC91 8B33 5044 912E
Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8)).
OK

STEP 3: get a new URL to link your account:

dropbox start

STEP 4: (hopefully) success!!!

[machias]

I didn't make any changes to my machine, I simply quit Dropbox and started it up again and then it started working. This happened about 20 minutes ago. I feel like something did change on the servers.

Whatever the reason, I'm happy it's working again!