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safix01's avatar
safix01
Helpful | Level 6
8 years ago

DbxSvc ID 320

Hi, In Event Manager, every second it shows " Failed to connect to the driver: -2147024894, retrying in 1000 milliseconds¨ ID:320 (DbxSvc). Is there an update error or something else? Thank you! ...
Setting up the apps
  • Ross_S's avatar
    Ross_S
    8 years ago
    Hi all,
     
    First: Many apologies for the delay in jumping in here, I wanted to make sure I had a concrete update for you all.
     
    So, for context: What is Dbxsvc? :
     
    I've added a section to the help center article: https://www.dropbox.com/help/business/smart-sync (I say section, it's more of a note at the bottom under the driver FAQ).
     
    The file dbxsvc.exe is a file that we use to install the Smart Sync driver. Should you not be a business user, or not have Smart Sync, then this file will never start operating. It is, however, created at install for all users so if you are not a Smart Sync this file will still appear there.
     
    I see we have a number of pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable, coupled with queries if it's safe to disable it. I'm of course not going to endorse a process that disables part of our software, should a feature or functionality cause user pain then we would want to know. Fixability and timeframes can vary depending on the in-depth technical nature of the problem.
    Should you decide to disable it with one of the solutions here, it will prevent the smart sync feature from working in some cases. We need the service to update the driver, as well as to establish new driver<->client connections. This is the services current functionality. Additional functionality could be added over time. My main concern around anyone disabling it is that in the future you may need this process, Smart Sync won't work correctly, you can reach out to support but this custom change you've made will be hard for us to diagnose as the root cause of whatever issue you experience.
     
     
    Why is it failing to connect / what's going wrong?:
     
    It should be failing to connect. This is by design, the actual issue you’re facing is due to the frequency we're writing to the logs. To address any concerns around error with the application, these errors are in no way indicative of a software issue and do not point to any issues with backing up you data. Because it fails to connect, Windows treats this as a trigger to write to the log. Your data is safe, this process is just used to install a driver. As covered in the above section we expect it to do what you are seeing.
     
    With that in mind, we understand that some of you do wish to see this behaviour.
     
     
    Why aren't we fixing this?:
     
    We are, we take our user feedback very seriously and we have spent many hours working on this. As fixes have many dependencies, and are just one components of a version release, I'm always reluctant to jump onto a thread and give a firm release date for a fix as these are regularly subject to change.
    You may have noticed that we took the original connection attempt frequency down from every 1 second to every minute. This was an improvement we took onboard based on the feedback you've supplied here and also via other channels. Our new release, 31.3.15, has further improved this, the process will run 3 times daily. This should reduce the errors written to the logs and not clutter the report.
     
    The new beta version is the first to include a fix:
     
forcefx2's avatar
forcefx2
New member | Level 2

I ran a quick powershell to disable this service. 

get-service -Name dbx | Stop-Service -NoWait |Set-Service -StartupType Disabled;get-service -Name dbx

ner0's avatar
ner0
Helpful | Level 5
8 years ago
forcefx2 wrote:

I ran a quick powershell to disable this service. 

get-service -Name dbx | Stop-Service -NoWait |Set-Service -StartupType Disabled;get-service -Name dbx

THIS! Thanks.

 

Also an alternative, run from an elevated cmd prompt:

sc stop DbxSvc & sc config DbxSvc start=disabled


To Dropbox devs reading: you are pitiful.

  • Ross_S's avatar
    Ross_S
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    8 years ago
    Hi all,
     
    First: Many apologies for the delay in jumping in here, I wanted to make sure I had a concrete update for you all.
     
    So, for context: What is Dbxsvc? :
     
    I've added a section to the help center article: https://www.dropbox.com/help/business/smart-sync (I say section, it's more of a note at the bottom under the driver FAQ).
     
    The file dbxsvc.exe is a file that we use to install the Smart Sync driver. Should you not be a business user, or not have Smart Sync, then this file will never start operating. It is, however, created at install for all users so if you are not a Smart Sync this file will still appear there.
     
    I see we have a number of pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable, coupled with queries if it's safe to disable it. I'm of course not going to endorse a process that disables part of our software, should a feature or functionality cause user pain then we would want to know. Fixability and timeframes can vary depending on the in-depth technical nature of the problem.
    Should you decide to disable it with one of the solutions here, it will prevent the smart sync feature from working in some cases. We need the service to update the driver, as well as to establish new driver<->client connections. This is the services current functionality. Additional functionality could be added over time. My main concern around anyone disabling it is that in the future you may need this process, Smart Sync won't work correctly, you can reach out to support but this custom change you've made will be hard for us to diagnose as the root cause of whatever issue you experience.
     
     
    Why is it failing to connect / what's going wrong?:
     
    It should be failing to connect. This is by design, the actual issue you’re facing is due to the frequency we're writing to the logs. To address any concerns around error with the application, these errors are in no way indicative of a software issue and do not point to any issues with backing up you data. Because it fails to connect, Windows treats this as a trigger to write to the log. Your data is safe, this process is just used to install a driver. As covered in the above section we expect it to do what you are seeing.
     
    With that in mind, we understand that some of you do wish to see this behaviour.
     
     
    Why aren't we fixing this?:
     
    We are, we take our user feedback very seriously and we have spent many hours working on this. As fixes have many dependencies, and are just one components of a version release, I'm always reluctant to jump onto a thread and give a firm release date for a fix as these are regularly subject to change.
    You may have noticed that we took the original connection attempt frequency down from every 1 second to every minute. This was an improvement we took onboard based on the feedback you've supplied here and also via other channels. Our new release, 31.3.15, has further improved this, the process will run 3 times daily. This should reduce the errors written to the logs and not clutter the report.
     
    The new beta version is the first to include a fix:
     
    • mmillennial's avatar
      mmillennial
      New member | Level 2
      8 years ago
      So it's an issue you know about, caused by something you know about, and instead of maybe adding an option during setup to disable features for business users, you're just reducing the number of times that a completely baffling Event Log entry gets logged? That's the biggest kludge I've ever heard of. What a joke!
    • ner0's avatar
      ner0
      Helpful | Level 5
      8 years ago
      Ross_S wrote:
      I see we have a number of pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable, coupled with queries if it's safe to disable it. I'm of course not going to endorse a process that disables part of our software, should a feature or functionality cause user pain then we would want to know. 
       

      Guess what, your awesome feature is causing pain, lots of it. In some cases it disrupts the system and/or the ability of a sysadmin to debug system's problems due to your superb idea of logging the same dong evry gdmnn second thus cluttering the event log with useless crap. 

       

       

      Ross_S wrote:
      My main concern around anyone disabling it is that in the future you may need this process, Smart Sync won't work correctly, you can reach out to support but this custom change you've made will be hard for us to diagnose as the root cause of whatever issue you experience.

       

      If that's the case, then it explains a lot... especially why this is being handled so passively.

      Your main concern should be that this feature is causing issues for those who aren't using it.

       

    • Server_Align's avatar
      Server_Align
      Collaborator | Level 10
      8 years ago

      OMG you added a service to install a driver, that only a small set of your customers require, great I just remembered why we canceled our business account!

       

      As to "pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable", I think you lost the plot, disabling a service with the service control manager configeration tool IS HOW YOU ARE MEANT TO! But no no what the Frack would Microsoft know about it, I mean they arent DB and all.

       

      As to "Because it fails to connect, Windows treats this as a trigger to write to the log.", talk about BS. The service writes that message to the log not windows being triggered, the servioce fails to make a connection, its writes to the event log, then resets to try again 1 second later.

      Its this ONE SECOND thats stupid, that is as near as you get to polling! Why is it not checking if its needed and not doing anything if its not, no no retry a second later im sure everything will be different. 

       

      And your fix i to not flood the log, but keep flooding the system with pointless processing, great DB at its finest.

       

      PS: to any who disable this using SC or the Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools\Services I would not trust that DB will change the settings on it on there next update, they ignore every other setting people make and just believe everyone wants 10+icon overlays and a bucnh of system hooks, no matter how many times they were removed. I dont expect a change with this either. I would suggest locating the EXE and changing its permissions to deny SYSTEM any access to it, that way the service will fail to start, and the updater wont be able to change the file.... (dont do it if you want Smart Sync working of course)

       

       

       

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