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Cannot run headless Dropbox in WSL linux
I am using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I've attempted to install a headless version of dropbox in both the Debian and Ubuntu distributions in WSL. I followed these instructions at https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux :
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
Running this last command produces the following output:
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._openssl.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._padding.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/apex._apex.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/psutil._psutil_linux.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/psutil._psutil_posix.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/google._upb._message.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/tornado.speedups.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/wrapt._wrappers.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/PyQt5.QtCore.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/PyQt5.QtCore.so'
Couldn't start Dropbox.
This may be a temporary error. Please restart Dropbox.
Get more help at https://www.dropbox.com/c/help/permissions_error
If the issue persists, please contact Dropbox support with the following info for help:
/tmp/dropbox_errorfvj_1y99.txt
The referenced file at the end shows the following error:
ImportError: libgthread-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Apparently dropboxd is expecting some packages to come pre-installed (no mention of this in the installation instructions). After some research, I found that the following command installed the required shared object:
sudo apt-get install libc6
After this, I attempted to run dropboxd once again, but this time obtained the following error:
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/PyQt5.QtDBus.so'
b'!! (Qt:Fatal) This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb".\n\nAvailable platform plugins are: xcb.\n\nReinstalling the application may fix this problem.'
Segmentation fault
Apparently, this non-GUI version of Dropbox requires the Qt GUI framework. Interesting... I proceeded to install Qt5 with the following:
sudo apt install qtbase5-dev
Now when I run dropboxd, the program stalls on this step:
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/brandon/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-206.4.6506/PyQt5.QtDBus.so'
I don't understand why the program freezes here. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi brandonbate,
According to what you describe, your Dropbox application is running finally. 🙂 As seems you don't have big experience in terminal. When some application work there it usually doesn't return until finish. That's something normal and not a freezing. 😉
You can install the deb package or the control script that take care to demonize the application, so you would be able to do something else in the same terminal. An alternative may be explicitly detaching the command by adding ampersand at the end. Execute following command instead:
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd&
Does your application still "freeze"? ❄🤫
Hope this helps.
