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holf's avatar
holf
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago

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

It seems I have the same problem as mentioned in above posts. I am running Dropbox on a pc and laptop, both having Linux-Lubuntu as the os. After a "one time update" on both systems, Dropbox is stuck indexing/uploading/downloading a small number of files. In addition, I noticed that when I rename a file on my hard disk, the name of that file is not always changed in the cloud. I tried the two fix options and did a complete reinstall of the dropbox client, but no success. I would appreciate any help.

  • 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. :wink:

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

    Hi there holf, thanks for reaching out to us here on the Community!

    I've moved your post to it's own thread as you're currently using a different OS (Linux rather than Windows) to those on the thread you originally posted in here.

    I'd love to troubleshoot with you and keep this separate to avoid any confusion. 

    Since you've already tried a few steps, could you let me know if you currently have any symlinks within your Dropbox folder? You can use the steps here in point 7 to check.

    If you are, could you try moving them outside the Dropbox folder or replacing them with the actual file to see if that helps syncing to progress?

    Let me know what you find and we'll go from there!

    • holf's avatar
      holf
      Helpful | Level 6

      Thank you. I will try out your suggestions and have a look at the other thread.

      • Здравко's avatar
        Здравко
        Legendary | Level 20

        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. :wink:

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