Dropbox - is there a method to actually make it work properly?

General Help
1

New to Linux a few months ago, and looking for Win11 alternatives. Have found alternatives to most things, except Dropbox. Except for Quicken and Dropbox, things are good. Quicken won't work through Wine, Bottles, or Lutris, and would have to pay more money than Quicken to use MoneyDance, which I also don't like using, but at least it's an option that works in Linux.

Am really struggling with getting Dropbox properly running. Until the Dropbox issues, I was excited to use Zorin after first trying Mint. I even intend to upgrade to Pro to support the ongoing development.

This machine is a Lenovo IdeaPad i5. It was purchased new as a Win11 machine with the entire intent to use it to set up Linux. It is setup with Zorin in dual boot. Dropbox was never set up in Windows, so I assume there should be no conflict between Windows and Linux both trying to own the dropbox files.

  1. Initially, following the Zorin instructions via the dropbox link, it was installed, and the daemon was installed.
  2. The Dropbox account has over 1tb and 350k files. This immediately caused issues since, during the install, there was no option to keep files in the cloud, with Nautilus simply using virtual pointers to them like in Windows Explorer. Once the 750gb of space on the laptop was exhausted, the installation stopped.
  3. To work around the virtual point problem, a 2tb SSD was installed to provide enough room for all the files.
  4. With help of a Linux buddy, we got Dropbox, Caja Dropbox, various things for Nautilus working and Dropbox worked fine. We never did get the taskbar icon for Dropbox to show up. But it synced all the time, and notifications popped up any time a file in Dropbox was modified by another machine. Life was good.

Then 4 weeks ago, it stopped syncing, when no other changes had been made to the machine.

After the uninstall and reinstall, the files initially synced 100%. For that moment in time as a result of the new installation only. They did not remain synced after the reinstallation.

The local files remain on the PC's SSD, but Dropbox no longer syncs. Saving files to the dropbox folder locally never make it up to Dropbox, and changes to files on Dropbox do not show up on this machine. I eventually figured out how to toggle the taskbar options so I can see the Dropbox icon in the tray.

Dropbox was commanded to auto-start when the machine boots, so it should always be running, but it's not. If I manually start Dropbox, it will run for a bit, showing the blue syncing icon, but never syncs. System monitor shows it's running, but the daemons are sleeping. Clicking the icon will show that it's "Starting" for hours. Eventually, the Dropbox taskbar icon goes away and it shuts itself down with nothing new having been synced.

Changed iNotify to make sure the number was higher than the number of files in Dropbox, since that seems to be a common problem. I've had it at 500,000 and 400,000, (350k files in Dropbox) but it doesn't matter.

At this point, I've invested an inordinate amount of time in trying to make Dropbox work. It is not an option to use another service than Dropbox, nor do I plan to host something on my NAS, etc. Having to locally save and manually upload / download via the browser is not an option for my workflow.

If I can't get Dropbox working, I'm simply not going to be able to use Linux on my machines.

QUESTIONS:

  1. Is there a method, step-by-step, with all appropriate commands, to make Dropbox install and sync properly?
  2. Do I need to wipe Zorin and start from zero?
  3. Do I need to eliminate the Windows partition and install Zorin as the only OS without dual boot?

Any recommendations for installing and making Dropbox actually work would be welcomed.

2

i belive this is what you are looking for

3

Thank you for that. Those folks, including the OP, were having a different situation. They have syncing working fine (I do not). They have a problem with the tray icon staying in a permanent state of "connecting". I do not have that problem.

For me, Dropbox does not stay running, the daemon's seem to stay sleeping, and stuff just does not sync. There are no firewall or antivirus issues, unless Zorin has a firewall built into it that I don't know about.

4

Atually it does its search firewall i dont belive its turned on by default but best to check its pretty simple one tho you allow outgoing and block incoming
you can make rules as well

5

Thanks for that. Just checked. Firewall is off, so that's good.

Actually, I just started researching pCloud, which apparently works much better with Linux as well as other platforms. Lifetime 2tb is $399, vs paying $119/yr for Dropbox 2tb. 14 day money back, so not much to risk there.

6

Awsome glad it got worked out...let us know how that endover goes...... :+1:

7

Can I suggest running Quicken in Winboat? I'm using it for a couple of Windows-only apps. Its basically a VM but it takes care of all the setup. I allocated half my RAM and 4 of the available 14 CPU cores to it. The advantage is that the windows app opens within a native Gnome window and you have built-in access to your Zorin file system.

8

Thank you. Actually, I tried Winboat first. It doesn't work. Something about Quicken makes it not want to play.

9

Ah OK. Have you tried a more traditional VM? I'm not the best to advise as my experience is limited. I've had partial success with VMs, they seem to work for a while, then one day it'll just refuse to boot and I need to recreate it.

10

Yeah, I have had similar experience with VM's. I'm not experienced enough to use them. I only tried Lutris based on the advise of a super experienced software engineer, who uses it for MobaXterm, which I also use. It works but I don't care for the experience. Frankly, all of this is a bit easier with dual booting, where I can boot into Win11 when I would need to do bills, and Linux the rest of the time.

pCloud
I did just sign up for a free pCloud account to test. I installed it on both this Zorin Linux laptop and a Win11 laptop. I dragged a folder from Dropbox into pCloud. This is a folder that contains a series of files I update daily, and create new revs of that file every week or two.

If the Dropbox install and operation in Zorin has been pure hell and an exercise in frustration, pCloud has been pure heaven and a walk in the park.

It installed from the Linux and Windows app I downloaded from their site, the notification in the tray works, the pCloud shortcut showed up on the left side in Nautilus in Zorin, and also in Windows Explorer in Win11. There was just no messing around.

I started with the free 5gb plan, but intend to move to their 2tb lifetime plan (pay once). I reorganized a bunch of files on my Win11 machine, and poof, they all synced immediately with the Zorin machine. This is what I'm used to with Dropbox on my Windows machines. I'm going to set it up on 2 other Windows machines, and my phone. I also installed it on an Android phone from the Play store.

If everything stays synced nicely, and automatic camera uploads work, I will sign up for the 2tb lifetime plan.

All this says is that Dropbox, which is many times the size of pCloud, with greater resources, has grown complacent and / or doesn't care at all about Linux. Companies who are still hungry to grow, like pCloud, obviously do care and their stuff just works. Also they are not based in the US, which is increasingly important to me for data privacy. I don't do anything bad, but I don't like people snooping into my stuff.

Note: I only tried pCloud because there was a YouTube review from 2 weeks ago where the (non-AI) guy compared different cloud storage options for storing camera photos. Several were really good, but pCloud seemed best for my purpose.

It has no limit on how many devices you can connect. I have 1 phone, 1 tablet, and 4 PC's on my Dropbox account.

Anyhow, it's been super encouraging so far. I'm just relieved to have something that installed easily and works, and will be much cheaper in the long run.

11

That sounds encouraging. Thank you for letting us know.

For the small amount of synchronising files that I require between my desktop, laptop and partner's laptop (2 Zorin, 1 Windows 10), I have been very happy with a Nextcloud setup on some spare server space (I have a reseller web hosting account on a UK company).

For direct sharing between these PCs I use SyncThing which works brilliantly.