As of November 7, 2018, Dropbox officially ended support for non-ext4 filesystems in their Linux client, e.g., xfs, btrfs, zfs, eCryptfs, etc. If the `Dropbox` directory is on a non-ext4 filesystem, newer versions of the client will display a warning dialog, then close after a short timeout. I have not tested it yet, but the last version before their cut-off date was 60.4.107, which may still work for now-- until they block it from connecting with their servers. This will probably require an enews entry. More information is available in this link: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Dropbox-client-warns-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/306368#solution_view Reproducible: Always
Pure gold...
I have ebuilds for net-misc/dropbox-60.4.107 (the last stable before this announcement) and net-misc/dropbox-63.4.107 (latest stable), along with a draft enews entry in my overlay. https://github.com/lamawithonel/gentoo-overlay Let me know if you want a PR to the GitHub org.
Perhaps candidate for treecleaning? With an upstream that narrow minded (and stupid?) why should we bother spreading such broken software?
I tested with 60.4.107, and it works with non-ext4 filesystems if I disable auto-updates. It does complain, but it doesn't force-quit itself like newer versions. To disable auto-updates I created a read-only file at $HOME/.dropbox-dist, where it normally stores its auto-update files. Without this it will auto-update to the latest version almost immediately and exit as described in the original bug report. As for tree cleaning, the ebuilds in the tree right now are broken, AFAIK-- at least I couldn't get them to work with the old versions. I agree this latest move is pretty stupid on their part, and I won't fault you if you want to drop maintenance. I'm still holding out hope that they wise up and figure out a better way to detect the filesystem features they require. In the meantime, it's easy enough to maintain an ebuild or two in my overlay.
FWIW there's an open source project that makes the dropbox binary work (again) on non-ext4 filesystems. https://github.com/dark/dropbox-filesystem-fix It produces a fake statfs64 implementation which always returns the EXT4_MAGIC when checking for the filesystem in use. The binary is then used in the LD_PRELOAD variable when launching dropbox. I have personally tested it (and the code is small and easy enough to audit) and it works fine. I personally think Dropbox (the company) made the wrong move and from an ethic point of view doesn't need to be encouraged in their mistakes, however from a pratical and pragmatical point of view, I couldn't find a better alternative and the fix works fine. It could be either integrated in the ebuild (via the "experimental" USE flag) or a message could be added to the ebuild so that users may choose to locally compile it and use it at their own discretion.
As a workaround, I created the dropbox-filesystem-fix, which uses the Github repository of the same name. Tried here with /home with XFS and working. It's available in my overlay, jorgicio.
My 15 cents: By Luca Santarelli request, I bumped a new Dropbox version available in my overlay with new USE-flag "experimental", which enables non-ext4 support. Now, the dropbox-filesystem-fix package is not needed by now. Thanks!
Any updates on this? :/
As of version *77.4.131*, this is fixed upstream, for the most part. The list of officially supported filesystems is still restricted, but it contains most of the common desktop filesystems: ext4, xfs, zfs, btrfs, and ecryptfs. It should work if you let it auto-update. I'm using it on zfs and btrfs. I guess that resolves the core issue, but the ebuilds are technically for older versions. Feel free to close this if the resolution meets Gentoo standards. Release announcement: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-77-3-127/td-p/354660
The bug has been closed via the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=9a0749b4a7d30ff75c76acb0c7fd10ffd9f1f2a2 commit 9a0749b4a7d30ff75c76acb0c7fd10ffd9f1f2a2 Author: Ben Kohler <bkohler@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2019-10-01 21:35:37 +0000 Commit: Ben Kohler <bkohler@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2019-10-01 21:44:21 +0000 net-misc/dropbox: bump to 81.4.195 w/ misc fixes Bump to new version. Removed (afaict) completely unused python deps & eclass usage. Fix up installed .desktop file. Add dep on new libffi-compat for libffi.so.6. Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/695804 Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/673184 Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/673096 Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650590 Package-Manager: Portage-2.3.76, Repoman-2.3.17 Signed-off-by: Ben Kohler <bkohler@gentoo.org> net-misc/dropbox/Manifest | 2 + net-misc/dropbox/dropbox-81.4.195.ebuild | 116 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ net-misc/dropbox/metadata.xml | 4 ++ 3 files changed, 122 insertions(+)
