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Forum Discussion

muxxum's avatar
muxxum
Helpful | Level 5
2 years ago

URL to link account in Linux does not work

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's avatar
    Sam DBX
    2 years ago

    Hi all,

     

    Thanks everyone who submitted tickets (and also the ones that helped here with info). 

     

    We've implemented a fix (as you some of you already reported) however, if you're still seeing that problem, you may be running into a separate issue.

     

    We can definitely look into it that for you if that's the case. 

     

    Thanks again!

    Sam 

     

     

     

     

  • BKV's avatar
    BKV
    Helpful | Level 5

    Thanks for the reply but obviously it's not the right one. More and more people are reporting this issue. FYI in my case it's occurring on a freshly reformatted computer with Ubuntu as OS and it's only the second device connected under this account. Furthermore, your website is extremely slow; not sure if it is linked but it shows there are issues at your end. Thanks to resolve and notify when done.

    • 7OD's avatar
      7OD
      New member | Level 2

      Same here.

      I'm in the basic plan and (now) on a fresh installation of Ubuntu-MATE.
      Dropbox downloaded an installation into ~/.dropbox-dist sucessfully.
      Starting the client did open a browser pointing to `https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link_nonce?nonce=xxxxxxxxxx`
      But each time the message was: "Ungültige URL. Bitte finden Sie die Korrekte heraus." (meaning: Invalid URL. Please find out the correct one.)

       

      I already had unlinked all devices, but one.
      So this is not the problem.

       

      Finally, by incident, I managed to link my new installation.
      After multiple reboots and multiple refreshes of the browser when saying "invalid URL" the Dropbox web UI came up.

      It seems to me that there is a race condition, the generated URL is not valid yet when the browser opens.
      This would correlate to the experience of a slow server stated by other users. Or maybe the time window of the generated nonce is to little.

       

      Please:
      * Could you pass this on to your development team
      * Consider Linux as a still important platform

       

      Best regards

       

      • jcator's avatar
        jcator
        New member | Level 2

        I have the url error constantly now. I have one laptop, before the url error it keeps detecting the same laptop randomly as new device when the URL does work.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi there muxxum, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

     

    Can you please let me know if you're getting a specific error and send us a screenshot so that we can have a visual too?

     

    Also, if you're on the Basic plan, have you ensured that you have no more than 3 devices connected to your account as you might be hitting the device limit?

     

    Let me know and we'll take it from there. 

    • muxxum's avatar
      muxxum
      Helpful | Level 5

      Having 3 devices linked turned out the be the problem. I didn't think to check that because the page that was coming up just said invalid URL. It gave absolutely no indication of there being any other cause so I was thinking something was going wrong with the software rather than it being too many devices. Without a meaningful error it meant nothing other than dropbox wasn't working.

       

      I don't have a screenshot of the page because it worked after I removed a device. But it was a generic picture on the page with the text under it saying, "Invalid URL. Please check your client for a new one."

       

      I did a google search and I found a picture of the page someone else posted. It's a quite terrible error message given what the problem was.

       

      https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/39374iE4AAD4CAE8CF03FA/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999

       

      A meaningful error would go a long way to helping customers, free tier or paid.

      • andy47's avatar
        andy47
        New member | Level 2

        I am having this problem as well, and I am not on basic.  I have at least 10 computers synced to my account, a mixture of Mac OS, Windows and mostly Linux.  I have never had any problems until the last few days, in which problems have been rampant in Linux.  Prior dropbox installations have trouble syncing, and new installations return a bad URL when trying to connect to the account for the initial sync.  I have tried this at least 5 times using different distros (Mint, Ubuntu, Debian) and the result is the same.  I see from other recent messages online that its happening to people regardless of flatpak or nautilus installs.  This seems like a massive error and that it has been lingering for a week without a fix is astonishing.  Years of using dropbox headache free, and now it won't install! 

         

        The error simply states "

        Error

        Invalid URL. Please check your client for a new one."

    • BKV's avatar
      BKV
      Helpful | Level 5

      UPDATE

      Today after starting my computer where it asks again to connect, I was directed to a page explaining the 3-device limit and proposing to unconnect / suign-out the older devices. I did and now it works fine.

    • jrdot's avatar
      jrdot
      Explorer | Level 4

       

      Same problem here.

       

      1 - 

       

      2 -

       

      3 - 

       

      4- 

       

      5 - I have only 1 macOS device

       

       

      • manuel_ventura's avatar
        manuel_ventura
        Explorer | Level 3

        I upgraded Kubuntu to 23.04 from 22.04 and I'm getting now the error on Chrome Browser. My laptop still running 22.04 and has not a problem. I have only one device registered in my account.

    • Megan's avatar
      Megan
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

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

  • CY5's avatar
    CY5
    New member | Level 2

    I am unable to link my new laptop running Ubuntu to my Dropbox account. The issue is not the number of devices - I am on a paid plan.

     

    The error message is the following:

     

    ErrorInvalid URL. Please check your client for a new one.
    • cathal's avatar
      cathal
      Explorer | Level 4

      I am also a paying member and cannot install dropbox in a new laptop, if not solved I will move to another file sharing app.

      • pk14's avatar
        pk14
        New member | Level 2

        same problem here. Since 2 days now. You should fix that asap. We are paying quite a lot for this service.

      • TempusNemini's avatar
        TempusNemini
        Explorer | Level 4

        The same problem on one of my laptops.

        All of them are the same config (running Arch) and only one have this problem.

         

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