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greg-knaddison's avatar
greg-knaddison
Helpful | Level 5
11 months ago

Dropbox "Starting..." for days on Ubuntu 22.04

I've installed the Dropbox command line version following the instructions on https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux   This is a 64 bit install on Ubuntu 22.04:   uname -a Linux redacted 5.15.0-9...
Desktop
dropbox business
Linux
Setting up the apps
Sync
  • greg-knaddison's avatar
    greg-knaddison
    11 months ago

    As it gets set up, the computer is not currently running antivirus, firewall, nor vpn/proxy. 

     

    When running dropbox start there was a message that appeared shortly after starting:

     

    Unable to monitor entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Please run "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" and restart Dropbox to fix the problem.

    While I had done that change, I found that running sysctl fs.inotify showed the fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 100000 was already set. On the machine where Dropbox currently works, I found we had the max_user_watches set to 10000000. Changing that value on this new server and rebooting seems to have gotten us past the Starting... status and now it is Indexing... 

     

    I'm hopeful it will get beyond Indexing in the next day and be able to finish Syncing.

Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Thanks for the update greg-knaddison 

 

Do you happen to be running any 3rd party apps like antivirus or firewalls, or VPN/proxy settings on your machine? 

 

If so, could you temporarily disable them and let me know how it goes?

greg-knaddison's avatar
greg-knaddison
Helpful | Level 5
11 months ago

As it gets set up, the computer is not currently running antivirus, firewall, nor vpn/proxy. 

 

When running dropbox start there was a message that appeared shortly after starting:

 

Unable to monitor entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Please run "echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p" and restart Dropbox to fix the problem.

While I had done that change, I found that running sysctl fs.inotify showed the fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 100000 was already set. On the machine where Dropbox currently works, I found we had the max_user_watches set to 10000000. Changing that value on this new server and rebooting seems to have gotten us past the Starting... status and now it is Indexing... 

 

I'm hopeful it will get beyond Indexing in the next day and be able to finish Syncing.

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    11 months ago

    Thanks for the update on this, greg-knaddison.

     

    Hopefully, that will work and syncing will finish for you, but if you're still running into any issues, let us know!

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