(SOLVED) Drop box times out and disappears

[besonian]

Although I'm using LXDE I'm posting this here because I doubt the desktop has anything to do with it, and it may help others using KDE.

Dropbox - I've been using it now on three computers in two different locations for about four months. And basically it's been excellent and I've really come to depend on it. However, yesterday on one computer, it wouldn't launch automatically as I've configured  it to with Parcellite in /home/me/.config etc. Not only that, but starting it via the menu it wouldn't connect with the server and timed out after 30 seconds and disappeared. I've tried uninstalling and re-installing - no joy. Plus I've unlinked that computer via the Dropbox website and re-linked it. As far as the site is concerned, all it as it should be. But still it falls over in exactly the same way.

Now, whether the following has anything to do with it, I don't know. And that is that yesterday also in that location - and I can't relate the timings to each other - I changed the router I'm using. I didn't at first see on the face of it what that would have to do with it - unless the gateway address is relevant and the two routers have different ones - but in any case I put the original router back and that's had no effect. On my main computer I also had to re-link it (so I guess the router may be a factor) and having re-linked that machine it's now working fine.

Sorry if that all sounds a bit convoluted, but if anyone can suggest any way around this I'd be very pleased.

[menotu]

Hi besonian

It does seem very coincidental not to be your router, but in saying that did you check that the Dropbox servers were up and running?

Have you had a look-see on the DropBox forums for anything similar happening in your time frame?

[besonian]

Thank you, menotu. Even if the Dropbox servers had been down yesterday - and I've no reason to suppose they were - they're certainly not down today. My main machine is working perfectly with Dropbox. And yes I did check their forum, albeit a bit rapidly, so I may go back there and take a more detailed look.

I agree, it seems too much of a coincidence not to have something to do with the router. But that still begs the question why it is that one machine is working OK with Dropbox via the same router that another machine is having this problem. Could it be something to do with my LXDE install on that other machine? As I said, I've uninstalled and re-installed Dropbox on it. I've also re-done the configutation with Parcellite for it to autostart.

[Ector]

Hi besonian

The Dropbox was updated and apparently linux users have to update manually. Go to the dropbox forum http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17284 and download the new version (32 or 64 bit). Move the file to your home directory, stop dropbox if it is running, and untar the file. Then restart dropbox and wait a while, You should see the message "dropbox updating..." when You hover over dropbox icon. It worked for me.

[besonian]

Ector - amazing! Thank you. It worked without a hitch. But have I been missing something? How are we Linux users supposed to know about this? Unless they expect us to log onto the Dropbox webite pretty well every day. Or - like I say, have I been missing something - like, is there a mailing list I should be subscribing to? How did you find out about that? Thank you again. It's great to have it back. 

[Ector]

I'm glad I could help . I had the same problem and after some unsuccessful googling I decided to check the forum, I'm not subscribed to any list. As I can see from the topics on the dropbox forum this upgrade caused some problems and was a surprise to many users. Hopefully Devs will give more attention notifying users about updates in the future.

[besonian]

Just so -   

[daniel]

amazing, my dropbox is up to date 

[besonian]

And it occurs to me only now that I haven't updated Dropbox on my main machine and that seems to be up to date. Curious.