Arch Linux

mhelvens

Member

From: Leiden, the Netherlands

Registered: 2013-12-04

Posts: 69

Website

Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

I am running Dropbox as a daemon as described on the wiki, with the service tweaked to show the tray icon.

For a while now, Dropbox has been misbehaving. The tray-icon will start, try to load, disappear, and appear again, in an endless loop. In the terminal, I can observe this (if I time it right). Just before a crash:

root@mhelvens-netbook / # systemctl status dropbox@mhelvens
● dropbox@mhelvens.service - Dropbox
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/dropbox@.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since zo 2014-06-01 20:07:55 CEST; 2s ago
 Main PID: 3220 (dropbox)
   CGroup: /system.slice/system-dropbox.slice/dropbox@mhelvens.service
           ├─3157 /home/mhelvens/.dropbox-dist/dropbox /newerversion
           ├─3220 /opt/dropbox/dropbox
           └─3267 /home/mhelvens/.dropbox-dist/dropbox /newerversion

jun 01 20:07:55 mhelvens-netbook systemd[1]: Started Dropbox.

And just after a crash:

root@mhelvens-netbook / # systemctl status dropbox@mhelvens
● dropbox@mhelvens.service - Dropbox
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/dropbox@.service; enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: signal) since zo 2014-06-01 20:07:58 CEST; 66ms ago
  Process: 3220 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropboxd (code=killed, signal=KILL)
 Main PID: 3220 (code=killed, signal=KILL)

jun 01 20:07:58 mhelvens-netbook systemd[1]: Unit dropbox@mhelvens.service entered failed state.

Now and then, Gnome will pop up a window on behalf of Dropbox, asking for my password ("Dropbox needs your permission to save settings to your computer."). Whether or not I provide it doesn't seem to make a difference.

When I re-installed Dropbox, the problem was temporarily fixed. After a reboot, it started crashing again the same way.

I have no idea what caused this behavior. (I've had some hectic months, and when it started happening I disregarded it.) I'd appreciate some help in trying to diagnose this problem. For example, I don't know where to find any pertinent logs. The ones in "/home/mhelvens/.dropbox/logs" seem to be in some binary format.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by mhelvens (2014-06-01 18:37:51)

XoseM

Member

From: ⁂

Registered: 2013-08-17

Posts: 15

Website

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

I cant help you, but I have the same problem.
I have to

killall dropbox
dropboxd

from terminal, and everything seems to work fine then (even nautilus integration). I'm not savvy to even know where to find the logs too

my systemctl

[el***n@arch ~]$ systemctl -l status dropbox@el***in
● dropbox@el***n.service - Dropbox
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/dropbox@.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Xov 2014-06-05 05:32:20 CEST; 11min ago
 Main PID: 466 (dropbox)
   CGroup: /system.slice/system-dropbox.slice/dropbox@el***n.service
           └─466 /opt/dropbox/dropbox

Xuñ 05 05:32:20 arch systemd[1]: Starting Dropbox...
Xuñ 05 05:32:20 arch systemd[1]: Started Dropbox.
Xuñ 05 05:32:31 arch dropboxd[466]: No protocol specified
Xuñ 05 05:32:31 arch dropboxd[466]: Unable to access the X Display, is $DISPLAY set properly?

Last edited by XoseM (2014-06-05 03:56:07)

XoseM

Member

From: ⁂

Registered: 2013-08-17

Posts: 15

Website

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

where do I set $DISPLAY? I think it's already set on dropbox@service

[el***n@arch system]$ cat dropbox\@.service 
.include /usr/lib/systemd/system/dropbox@.service
[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0

Is this problem caused because dropbox service starts before X-server is running?

Last edited by XoseM (2014-06-05 04:39:54)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

XoseM, your problem is not the same as the OP.  Instructions on where to set the DISPLAY variable can be found in the wiki (like most things).

@OP, sorry but I don't know about your issue...

XoseM

Member

From: ⁂

Registered: 2013-08-17

Posts: 15

Website

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

XoseM, your problem is not the same as the OP.  Instructions on where to set the DISPLAY variable can be found in the wiki (like most things).

@OP, sorry but I don't know about your issue...

thanks

I've edited my previous post showing that I already have set DISPLAY (as wiki said )
***

edit:

on terminal

[el***n@arch system]$ env
....
DISPLAY=:0
....

so I think dropbox@service is properly set

and I did systemctl enable for the user AND unchecked the start up option

I'm sorry for bring here my problem, but it was very similar on it's behaviour. I'll try to run dropbox as user-daemon as alternative (following wiki).
thanks again

Last edited by XoseM (2014-06-05 04:52:17)

festerman

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 1

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

@OP: This is a known problem caused by the auto-update of dropbox. How to turn them off is in the comments to the dropbox package.

/festerman

mhelvens

Member

From: Leiden, the Netherlands

Registered: 2013-12-04

Posts: 69

Website

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

@OP: This is a known problem caused by the auto-update of dropbox. How to turn them off is in the comments to the dropbox package.

Aha. Sounds good!

I've performed the silly hack proposed by adambot in the comments. For future reference, that's:

rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
install -dm0 ~/.dropbox-dist

In the home directory of the Dropbox user. Basically it removes that hidden directory and disallows Dropbox any future access to it, presumably preventing the auto-update.

Thanks! I'll see if it works soon enough.

Last edited by mhelvens (2014-07-28 12:49:17)

skiwi

Member

Registered: 2012-11-28

Posts: 38

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

Nice! I hopes this also solves my CPU eating issue.
For me at least time every time the dropbox icon would dissapear it would start running in background ('ps -e | grep dropbox'), as if going in some infinite loop to kill the CPU.

By the way, I had never used the 'install' command but it seems equivalent to mkdir

rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
mkdir -m0 ~/.dropbox-dist

mhelvens

Member

From: Leiden, the Netherlands

Registered: 2013-12-04

Posts: 69

Website

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

By the way, I had never used the 'install' command but it seems equivalent to mkdir

rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
mkdir -m0 ~/.dropbox-dist

Yeah. In this case it probably is. :-)

Last edited by mhelvens (2014-07-29 10:14:05)

skiwi

Member

Registered: 2012-11-28

Posts: 38

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

No more CPU heating since.

mikael

Member

From: Slovakia

Registered: 2011-05-22

Posts: 30

Re: Dropbox as a systemd service continually crashing and restarting

I'm having similiar issue:

mike@zeus:~$ systemctl status dropbox@mike.service 
● dropbox@mike.service - Dropbox
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/dropbox@.service; enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: start-limit) since Fri 2014-11-21 05:22:38 CET; 1h 30min ago
  Process: 2566 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropboxd (code=killed, signal=KILL)
 Main PID: 2566 (code=killed, signal=KILL)

Nov 21 05:22:37 zeus systemd[1]: dropbox@mike.service: main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
Nov 21 05:22:37 zeus systemd[1]: Unit dropbox@mike.service entered failed state.
Nov 21 05:22:37 zeus systemd[1]: dropbox@mike.service failed.
Nov 21 05:22:38 zeus systemd[1]: start request repeated too quickly for dropbox@mike.service
Nov 21 05:22:38 zeus systemd[1]: Failed to start Dropbox.
Nov 21 05:22:38 zeus systemd[1]: Unit dropbox@mike.service entered failed state.
Nov 21 05:22:38 zeus systemd[1]: dropbox@mike.service failed.

Why so many dropboxd ?

mike@zeus:~$ locate dropboxd
/home/mike/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
/home/mike/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.10.52/dropboxd
/opt/dropbox/dropboxd
/usr/bin/dropbox

mike@zeus:~$ ps -ef |grep dropbox
mike      1389 30272  0 06:54 pts/8    00:00:00 grep --color=auto dropbox
mike      2589     1  0 05:22 ?        00:00:08 /home/mike/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.10.52/dropbox /newerversio

mike@zeus:~$ sudo pacman -R dropbox dropbox-cli 
[sudo] password for mike: 
checking dependencies...

Packages (2): dropbox-2.10.51-1  dropbox-cli-1.6.2-4