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Forum Discussion
Dropbox keeps trying to download and sync files set to online only
I had this same issue with a particular folder when I first set up my new Windows 10 laptop, but closing and restarting Dropbox seemed to fix it. (Derp.) Today it randomly started trying to downl...
Hey Sanchez , Rachel L. , et al
I have some good news! I believe that I have identified the process that attempts to index these files, thereby initiating Dropbox Smart-Sync to begin downloading them.
The process is called "Ableton Index". It is a normal part of the Ableton software suite and part of its normal operation is to scan and index all the "Places" I have favorited in the Ableton browser. It will "touch" image, video, and audio data in such a way that it causes Dropbox Smart-Sync to initiate on-demand downloads. The solution is not to have any Dropbox-daemon-managed locations in your Ableton "Places" list. Furthermore, a Dropbox-daemon-managed location cannot be a subfolder of a folder in the Ableton "Places" List.
For tech-savvy posterity, I'll take a moment to illuminate the methodology I used to identify the meddlesome process. These instructions will only apply to Mac OSX users. They probably translate easily to Linux, but Windows users will need to do more research to identify analogous tools.
The idea is to run a tool in your terminal that tracks and logs file access. You'll have to start that running and then wait for the undesired smart-sync downloads to begin. You're basically trying to catch the problem red-handed in the act! One such tool on Mac OSX is "opensnoop".
- Open Terminal
- Run `sudo opensnoop -s > opensnoop.log` (this captures the opensnoop output and stores it in a log file)
- Inspect the log file for processes that accessed the file. I recommend using `grep` to search for the specific filepath that you didn't want to download. You'll see a process name (or process ID) and you can use that to identify the process causing the problem.
I hope this helps for the future!
SanchezAs a feature-request (or does this exist already?) -- is there a log-file that the local Dropbox Daemon keeps that would explain every smart-sync decision that Dropbox daemon makes? As an end-user troubleshooting this situation, I would love to have a source of truth for Dropbox's decision-making that could immediately tell me whether or not the Smart-Sync action was "user-initiated" or if it was initiated by a process, and if so, which one.
Returning in defeat to my thread...
thebobalos I'm afraid I've never heard of this "Ableton" software (searching for it on my laptop brought up nothing but online search results), so that can't be the cause of my problem. 😞
I've been trying to avoid the issue simply by shutting Dropbox down before it could start acting up on Fridays around 6:35PM, turning it back on after 7PM. This worked...until today. I forgot to turn it off and only realized after 7 that it hadn't acted up! I felt hopeful that maybe a Dropbox or Windows update had resolved the issue. Well...no. It's just delayed now. 😞 Around 8:05PM it started trying (both failing and succeeding) to download the three zipped files I have set to online only. I changed their settings back, and did the one thing I haven't tried yet--created a new folder specifically for the three problem zipped files, made it online only, and excluded it from Windows 10 indexing, since I USED to think that was the cause of the problem. (Apparently, it isn't.) Dropbox settled down...but a few moments later, after I'd made changes to an unrelated file that IS stored locally (did this on my tablet, watched it sync to my laptop), it started trying to download the problem files again. This time I got a notification saying that the file in question was online only and if I wanted to view it (I hadn't been trying to view it!), I had to download it. This despite the fact that it already had downloaded one of the files!
I AGAIN reset them to online only...only to see Dropbox now attempting to download the contents of one of the other, online-only, non-indexed folders it had tried to do in the past. I reset that to online only...and shut Dropbox down again, even though I'm right in the middle of syncing some other files.
I'm so frustrated by this, especially now that I'm not sure WHAT time it'll start acting up (why did it change??), much less when it'll be "safe" to start Dropbox up again, plus, I know for sure that excluding files from indexing won't fix the problem. (Plus I'm kind of creeped out that Dropbox and/or Windows thought I was trying to view a file that I wasn't. Why would it do that?) Windows could very well be to blame, and probably is, but I've thought over and looked into everything I can think of and nothing explains this.
