Syncing is stuck on my Linux devices, what can I do?

Hi Здравко

I tried the second step looking for symbolic links

ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "

And inded there were several symbolic links.

In fact, when I tried to run

sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox"

this is why I got a bunch of errors like this:

chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on [...]

Does this mean I need to somehow remove these symbolic links in order to get my Dropbox synching unstuck on my Linux machine?

If so, how does one do this, and how do I do it without breaking stuff?

For a bit of context, most of my symbolic links are associated with Python env. For example:

$ ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin    3 Oct 27 14:48 lib64 -> lib
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin    9 Oct 27 14:48 python -> python3.8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin    9 Oct 27 14:48 python3 -> python3.8

Any assistance with this would be appreciated.

I found the sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox" command very enlightening, as it listed two files as "Operation not supported while reading flags on ..."

When looking at these two files on the dropbox website, I got error 415 on both of them, with an indication that someone will look at them.

So I will wait and see what happens.

Thanks for the instructions

OMG you are a legend, in my case what solved was raising that "max_user_watches" limit.
I also managed to make it persistent using draylson's instructions.

I was struggling with this problem for ages, thank you very much!

Hi, thank you so much for the very clear, systematic answer. It was a life-saver!

I went through your suggestions in order until I found the solution. In my case it was the number of watched files that was wrong - I had a max limit of 8000, when I needed 250000. The horrible side-effect was that random changes on my disk (even outside the dropbox folder) caused (or sometimes caused) dropbox to go into the forever sync loop. Upping the limit on watched files resolved the problem. 

A suggestion: your recipe was perfect - but it required your expert knowledge.  Most of us could never have worked it out for ourselves. It would be wonderful if you could write a short description of the way Dropbox interacts with Linux and the linux file system (files locations, permissions needed,  reasons why particular parameter settings affect performance). That way we could form our own mental model of the system and avoid some of the frustration.

A hint for dropbox technical support: a lot of user problems are not  due to Dropbox technology (which many of us love) but to lack of clear documentation. Note: we don't just want recipes to resolve problems. We want explanations and diagrams so we can understand the root cause of the difficulties we are experiencing.

i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i

This gave me a value of 36784

sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

This value was set to 8192. Way too low looking at the value needed above.

sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 

Setting it to 100000 allowed my Dropbox to successfully start syncing immediately when i restarted it.

Thanks very much for this solution!

For years I've been trying to get this to work on Debian. Maybe at some point the dropbox headless deamon worked on Debian, now not anymore. I've connected an account with only 1500 files and 2GB of data. On Debian I can copy new files to the Dropbox folder and they will sync, but Dropbox will not download new files that are added to the account.

Permissions are correct. Maximum watched files is at 8000. I've spent too much time trying to install the dropbox daemon as a system service, hoping I could get it to write  to the syslog. I simply can't get it working on Debian. 

This guide just gives me a dead service: 

https://www.jamescoyle.net/how-to/1147-setup-headless-dropbox-sync-client

This guide gets me stuck on the fact Debian doesn't have "/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions", and also there is no "/etc/sysconfig" folder.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-and-run-dropbox-from-a-headless-linux-server/

(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"

this won't run because "dropbox" isn't a valid command on my Debian install. 

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Здравко wrote:

Hi holf,

At the beginning you can try fix possible permission errors:

sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox"
sudo chattr -R -i "$HOME/Dropbox"
chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox

Also, existing symbolic links could be found using:

ls -alR ~/Dropbox | grep " -> "

If no any change, check the needs for watchable entries:

i=0; IFS=$'\n'; for a in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do ((++i)); done; echo $i

The above will give you some estimation. The current upper border could be received using:

sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches

If the estimation above don't fit in last result, try extend the border using something like:

sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000

Tune the value according your needs (with some reserve, of course).

If nothing helps yet, try to find out the exact files making troubles (which will give you chance investigate further), using something like:

(IFS=$'\n';for i in `ls -R1 ~/Dropbox`; do if [[ "$i" =~ ":" ]]; then cd `echo "$i" | sed "y/:/\//"`; echo -n "In folder: "; pwd; dropbox filestatus; fi; done) | grep -vi "up to date" | grep -vi ".dropbox:" | grep -vi ".dropbox.cache:"

Last command assume you have installed properly 'dropbox' command, either using debian package or by hand. Otherwise "command not found" will be signaled. Will be enumerated all folders in Dropbox and signaled problematic files inside, if any. Be patient, could take some time, depending on your content size. Once found out problematic entries, you can use different techniques for investigate, like see current file's classic attributes (the simplest one):

ls -l ~/Dropbox/Troublesome/file.ext

Good luck.

The following instructions word for me:

sudo chown -R "$USER" "$HOME/Dropbox"
chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox

I have tried everything i can find anywhere to get dropbox working correctly on Ubuntu 20.04.

I even flushed a machine and rebuilt it.  Same problem.

I am using to to synch between my dev machine and a hosted Ubuntu 20.04.

Up until last week, it had no problems whatsoever.

Now, it goes into "Indeexing" and never finishes, ever.

Any ideas?