Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

[Shawn B.14]

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 that a number of new files added Saturday had big red Xs on them -- JPEGs I had scanned Saturday and which were in sync to my laptop on Sunday morning.

I checked my other workstation (also always on) and Dropbox wasn't even running.  I launched it, and it pretty immediately ran a "one time update".   Once this completed, it appeared to go into a full-on sync mode, indexing thousands of files and downloading thousands more (my total dropbox footprint is ~17k files, 600 GB of data).  This has been running for 24 hours without making any apparent progress, despite the drive being materially in sync with my first workstation (using BeyondCompare to check).  Plus not enough system activity to indicate any actual indexing or download was taking place.

I paused workstation 2, uninstalled dropbox on workstation 1 and reinstalled it.  Just prior to this, workstation 1 was "stuck" uploading 2 files and downloading 7 files, which it had been on since last night.

Workstation 1 now shows "indexing" for around 8k files and "downloading" for 9k files.  Trouble is, Resource Monitor doesn't show disk activity or network activity for that kind of activity.

What's going on?  I was perfectly in sync as of Saturday morning and over the last 24 hours it's gotten bad.

Oddly, my laptop ("laptop 1") is apparently fine, showing more or less normal sync status as far as I can tell (and is on build 88.4.172).

[Shawn B.14]

A further update -- I had to log off this computer and log back in, and when I did Dropbox began a total resync cycle (?) again -- a ton of disk activity that's been going on for nearly an hour, even though when I logged out it showed in sync.  There's no apparent networking activity, so I'm guessing this isn't a complete download type resync, just Dropbox local indexes being recreated (again).

So I guess I would have to downgrade my assessment from "appears to be fixed" to "appears to be kind of fixed", as the activity shows something is happening and I assume if it ultimately finished before it will finish again.

[gformenti]

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@Shawn B.14 wrote:

So I guess I would have to downgrade my assessment from "appears to be fixed" to "appears to be kind of fixed", as the activity shows something is happening and I assume if it ultimately finished before it will finish again.

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LoL
My solution was awfull but worked for me, I asked to be removed of our TEAM dropbox and downloaded everything again, howeer the DL rate was abismal 500kbs someitmes it would jump to impressive 1.5mbps. It almost seems that their infra-structure is completly bottlenecked.

[stolsvik]

Just want to add my story to this thread, as I realized later that this is probably the same problem.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Stuck-syncing-Syncing-372-files-Uploading-372-files-ca...

However, In addition to the stuckness mentioned in this thread, I also currently have a message (from 'dropbox status') that says Can't sync "eclipse_update_120.jpg".Do note that the filename changes while it is doing a re-synch, which it evidently needs to do each time I restart Dropbox - but it now ends up on the same file every time.

[Matt F.16]

A glimmer of hope for me... I was experiencing the endless "Syncing....." with no numbers (no #### uploading, #### downloading, etc.)

The dropbox would be stuck at "Syncing..." for 9 hours, eat all the memory, and then die.

I got to thinking - maybe the memory "leak" is due to an infinitely recursive symlink.

I found a symlink that was something along the lines of..

/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/*Symlink-to-/America*

Which resulted in the possibility to endlessly traverse the symlink:

/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America....etc...

This must have caused the new dropbox client to get stuck in a loop, eating endless memory. Key point -- this link has been there for many years and never caused issues for previous dropbox clients.

After changing the symlink so it's not infinitely recurisve, Dropbox client is now showing "Syncing #### files.. #### downloading, #### uploading..." I can only pray it actually completes a full sync.

[s4ndman]

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@s4ndman  escreveu:

Miraculously, it appears that there has been progress in sync. Of more than 3000 files pending for some time, only 17 now.

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I think I praised it too early and since the message above it's stuck at the same count. Tomorrow I will cancel my Plus plan if it is not resolved. Not even feedback from the open ticket (# 10190485) I had.

[AOW1]

Thanks @Fiona . I was able to complete what was asked of me by support and it has not resolved the issue. I just updated my ticket with additional notes for the support team including some information about something I noticed with .dropbox.cache. Hope to hear back soon.

[Matt F.16]

As posted previously, I was able to get beyond "Syncing..." (with no numbers) by finding and removing the circular symlink reference.

However, now the syncing (with numbers) appears to be going at the speed of a snail:

Syncing 524 files • 2+ days
Uploading 278 files (0.0 KB/sec, 2+ days)
Downloading 246 files (0.1 KB/sec, 2+ days)

[Ronald H.]

I am also using Boxifier app that has the option to prevent Dropbox updates. I have this switched on an using Dropbox 87.4.138. Still no fix or progress: endless "synching" message with no numbers, etc.

[Trevor R.7]

My Dropbox was stuck on Syncing since 14 Jan 2020. With the superb assistance of Dropbox livechat I now understand that the change in how Dropbox handles symlinks was the cause of my syncing being stuck.

I had the whole of the contents of my Windows 10 Desktop symlinked to Dropbox. Removing that symlink and Fix Hardlinks plus Fix Permissions resulted in my syncing to become unstuck. I now realise that any changes to my Desktop will no longer be backed up on Dropbox.

Alternatives to automatically backup folders that are outside Dropbox such as the Desktop that I am aware of are Boxifier and Windows 10 File History.

[AngstromZA]

I posted in this thread originally (I think?) but it was moved to 'a more appropriate' thread which apparently has been marked as 'solved'.

My problem is certainly not solved.

I was experiencing a "Starting...", crash, restart, "Starting..." cycle with version 88.4.172.  I was advised to upgrade to 89.4.278 which I did.  Still the same cycle persisted.

Then I used the web settings to unlink the PC in question, uninstalled and reinstalled from scratch.  I setup a selective sync when logging in 'for the first time' and ultimately saw 'Syncing...'.  So I thought I'd give it some time and see what happens.  Well, after about 24 hours it crashed silently and restarted itself and I'm back to the dreaded 'Syncing...'.

It did, however, appear to sync a new file I copied to the DropBox directory on the affected PC.

It may be of interest that this is a Win10 x64 PC.  Another PC of mine running Win7 x64 appears to be working without any issues.

It may further be of interest that a few weeks ago I set a registry key to allow much longer filenames, i.e. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\LongPathsEnabled has a value of 1.

For various reasons my development projects have deeply nested directories.  There are no symlinks though, I've run the suggested checks and there are no results.