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Forum Discussion
Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?
I have the "Dropbox Plus" subscription and I run the client on 4 computers.
Yesterday (Monday, 13-Jan-2020) I signed onto my desktop (which is always on) and has a full local sync of my dropbox...
I started the migration to Onedrive and in the final files, Dropbox was synchronized normally. So, I put all the files back on Dropbox and there were no more errors.
Finally! SUCCESS. After 2 weeks of troubleshooting I'm "Up to date", fully sync'd.
Symptom #1: "Syncing...." (with no indication of # of files) Dropbox dies after it runs out of memory.
Root cause #1: A circular symlink that allowed for infinite path tranversal (e.g.: /root/a/b/c/d/symlinkto-b/c/d/symlinkto-b/c/d/symlinkto-b/c/d/etc..)
Solution #1: Rearrange the symlinks so they cannot be infinitely traversed.
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Symptom #2: Stuck at "Syncing ####, Downloading ####, Uploading ####" sometimes w/ speeds like 0.1k/s. Dropbox eats memory over time but never makes progress. The point at which it gets stuck seems random.
Root cause #2: I run multiple applications within my Dropbox folder. Some of them use or create files that are not owned by the same user/process that Dropbox is using. So Dropbox doesn't have access to read *and* write to every single file that is created/updated by the applications.
Solution #3: Ensure *EVERY* file within Dropbox's reach (including inside/past/through/beyond symlinks) is fully owned RW (read-write permissions) by the same user/account/process as the Dropbox process. The "Fix Permissions" button attempts to automate this, but who knows if it always works.
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Key point: My system as it was before, lasted for 4-6 years worth of Dropbox updates. In the past if Dropbox couldn't read/sync/access a file, it would continue on sync'ing everything else. If I gave it READ access to the unsync'd file, that was enough, it could sync and move on.
There were obviously some significant changes to Dropbox in the past few weeks that have made it so if you have 1 single file that cannot be changed (WRITE, UPDATE) by Dropbox, it will destroy your entire sync with no indication what's going on. This is crazy, counterintuitive, and shame on Dropbox for not communicating this major change to us.
I'm on Linux, so it's pretty straight forward to search for files that Dropbox cannot edit (+w). Windows isn't as friendly and likes to hide files, so if you're on Windows it may require some extra searching to locate the culprit(s). Be sure to try the "Fix Permissions" button and check all symlinks to see if they're circular.
To Daphne 's credit, if I had followed her troubleshooting steps TO THE LETTER (delete all symlinks, run the custom Linux Fix Permissions script), I probably would have solved this sooner. However, the reality of live applications running on this server coupled with the fact that everything worked as-is for 4-6 years made me very skeptical.
To Dropbox's non-credit (debt?) -- WAKE UP and provide a detailed CHANGELOG to your users like every other company on the planet. The one you give now is quite shallow and never mentioned this change. Something this significant is even worthy of a technical blog post from your engineers. I wish I could send you a bill for my 40+ hours of trouble.
Okay, so i decided i'd rather have dropbox running properly again then to keep my symlinks (at least till DB fixes it).
- my symlinks are super simple, i have folders in dropbox, i need them in another directory, so i symlink them....Anyways, i deleted all symlinks that had to do anything with dropbox. (and checked with NTFSlinkview.) and rebooted both pc's. Hoping that the problem would be resolved. Sadly not the case. (i tried clicking fix permissions and hardlinks, but dropbox keeps crashing before it gets it done).
Does anyone have any tips?
FYI: ISSUES SYMLINKS
1) If the symlink in inside dropbox pointing to another location then when a file is accessed this is resolved to the true location, and if tyhe file is then updated the operating system notifies interested applications that a file has been updated at trhe location it reolved to (the true location), if that is outside ofd the dropbox folder then DB does not know the file was updated so takes no action, on a DB restart the change is spotted as the application makes a quick pass over all files looking for changes from the database values. No content is checked just file meta data (date time size etc)
2) If the Symlink does not exist on a syncing machine, say it was just generated or was just renamed, then dropbox sees the symlink folder as a new folder and instructs syncing machine to make a new folder and not a symlink
3) recusive symlinks where it points to a location above it or another location that a symlink there points to a location above the first.
THERE IS NO ISSUE WITH SYMLINKS POINTING INTO THE DROIPBOX FOLDER.
When these are used they are resolved to the location of the dropbox and accessed normally.
* Many years ago there was a dropbox symlink app, it found symlinks in dropbox, resolved where they went to and then it monitored all the files at those locations for changes, when one was detected, it tweaked the symlink in the dropbox folder so dropbox thought the symlink updated, and the DB app then looked over the content of the symlinked folders for changes. This was OK unless the resolved location housed 10,000's of files then each change cuased DB to rescane all of them since it was only woken about the symlink location (I expect it is not possible to issue change notifications to sysmlink downstream locations as they are always resolved first.)
