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Forum Discussion
Ubuntu stuck in "Starting ..." and no Dropbox folder location is shown
Hi,
my symptoms are very similar to what other posts have reported, after connecting a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 installation dropbox is stuck in status "starting ....".
I raised the `fs.inotify.max_use...
Hi,
re-installing simply won't help. I now have a solution I can describe to help others with the same issue:
0) since $HOME is on XFS file system, I need a separate ext4 partition to host the Dropbox folder. What worked in the past was to mount an ext4 partition directly on ~/Dropbox.
This does NOT WORK ANYMORE, since dropbox tries to rename that upon start/installation.
1) I had to have a temporary $HOME on ext4, which then happily created ~/Dropbox and do the syncing.
2) Then I can use dropbox preferences/sync to move ~/Dropbox to a subfolder e..g ~/ext4/Dropbox
3) Then I can mount my normal $HOME on XFS, and mount the separate ext4 under ~/ext4/ with the ~/ext4/Dropbox folder.
So for your engineering team, please test ~/Dropbox being a mountpoint of an ext4 partition, and/or lift the requirement/restriction to a specific filesystem for ~/Dropbox.
Yours,
Steffen
Hi,
ok, I cleaned any traces of the existing installation. Interestingly, there was no `/var/lib/dropbox`. The Ext4 `$HOME/Dropbox/lost+found` folder was not owned by my user but by root. Fixed now.
For installation I used the current dropbox_2024.04.17_amd64.deb.
There was no opportunity to `Apply any selective sync preferences you had before the reinstall`, and also no opportunity to `Select the Dropbox folder location` because nothing was asking the question.
The remaining dropbox daemon was downloaded and started, and I have the same situation as before, with `dropbox status` saying "Starting ....", no Dropbox folder configured under Preferences/Sync tab.
I have temporarily disabled firewall, security and apparmor, which didn't help.
Anything else to try ?
Yours,
Steffen
One more thing, running dropbox under strace I found
`[pid 8614] rename("/home/sneumann/Dropbox", "/home/sneumann/Dropbox (Old)") = -1 EBUSY (Device or resource busy)`
This totally makes sense, manually running mv gives the same:
```
mv Dropbox Dropbox-old
mv: cannot move 'Dropbox' to 'Dropbox-old': Device or resource busy
```
since there is a dedicated partition mounted:
`/dev/nvme0n1p7 on /home/sneumann/Dropbox type ext4 (rw,relatime)`
because the rest of $HOME is sitting on xfs:
`/dev/nvme0n1p6 on / type xfs (rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota)`
=> Could that be the culprit ? If yes, how to setup partitions if I want xfs for `/` and `/home` ?
Yours,
Steffen
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Have you tried uninstalling the Dropbox app entirely, and then rebooting the device, deleting the old Dropbox folders, and reinstalling it again?
Hi,
re-installing simply won't help. I now have a solution I can describe to help others with the same issue:
0) since $HOME is on XFS file system, I need a separate ext4 partition to host the Dropbox folder. What worked in the past was to mount an ext4 partition directly on ~/Dropbox.
This does NOT WORK ANYMORE, since dropbox tries to rename that upon start/installation.
1) I had to have a temporary $HOME on ext4, which then happily created ~/Dropbox and do the syncing.
2) Then I can use dropbox preferences/sync to move ~/Dropbox to a subfolder e..g ~/ext4/Dropbox
3) Then I can mount my normal $HOME on XFS, and mount the separate ext4 under ~/ext4/ with the ~/ext4/Dropbox folder.
So for your engineering team, please test ~/Dropbox being a mountpoint of an ext4 partition, and/or lift the requirement/restriction to a specific filesystem for ~/Dropbox.
Yours,
Steffen
