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Forum Discussion
Dropbox is compatible with Ext4 but doesn't recognize ext4 drive?
So, like most Linux users, I've gotten the message about needing to upgrade to an ext4 drive. I had an extra drive in my machine with nothing on it so I formatted it to ext4. I rebooted then went into my prefs to change location and it tells me:
To sync your Dropbox, move your Dropbox folder to a partition with a compatible File System. Dropbox is compatible with Ext4.
So, when is an ext4 drive not an ext4 drive?
I'm using v55.4.171
I've found a workaround. Create a new folder within the mount point of your ext4 drive. Then, simply choose that folder as the target in the Dropbox app. Here's an example:
Mount point of ext4 drive:
/media/mynewdrive
Make new directory within the mount point, say "DropboxContainer". Now choose the following path (simply choose in the Dropbox GUI) as the sync target:
/media/mynewdrive/DropboxContainer
To confirm, your Dropbox sync folder would look like this:
/media/mynewdrive/DropboxContainer/Dropbox
In my case, it used to complain about the ext4 thing, but this workaround seems to have done the job. Please let me know if it works for you.
This solution did the trick for me, too. Thanks @AminSadeghi
Ah in the last 2 days the problem has magically returned again, after working with no problem for a month (it happened at the same time on 2 machines).
No idea what has changed. I presume it is a remotely activiated restriction. I'm sure I've not changed anything, after my gparted fiddle a month ago (posted earlier 11-13-2018 12:17 AM which fixed the problem on all 3 of my linux machines I use).
They changed something, location doesn't even need to be on an ext4 drive anymore as shown in my fstab above. My Dropbox location is /home/XXXX/Dropbox which is an ext3 partition
Oh, I see. Are you saying that they've fixed it?
Your workaround works for me with Ubuntu 18.04 fresh install
@pwang
What ... you needed to do the Gparted fiddle after your Ubuntu 18.04 install too ?
I have a sneaking suspicion that Dropbox checks the location of the binary (/usr/bin/dropbox). I run a recent Ubuntu version with nautilus-dropbox installed. The root partition is ext3, the separate /home partition is ext4 so it should be good, yet Dropbox complains. I hope somebody can confirm this.
Well, Dropbox's really lost it. Today I got a second warning from Dropbox for a different Linux system, where *all* relevant partitions are ext4.
Message to Dropbox: please fix your filesystem detection routine or improve the error message, or Dropbox goes in November. There are alternatives.
Just want to add that I have a similar issue here. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, root system in ext3, dropbox folder in ext4 but not recognized as such by the app.
It's unfortunately to see the lack of response so far, but maybe this is just part of some cost cut decision to reduce the resource on providing Linux support in general (may make sense from a business perspective).
That's a good posibility as well which means I'm done with dropbox because I have my system set up the way I want and I'll be damned if I'm going to format and reinstall all my apps for an app I'm hardly using at the time. I'll figure out something else before I do that
- I also have this issue. I am running Ubuntu 16.04 and have an ext4 partition, so this really surprises me that this problem occurs.
I mean yeah sure I'm too lazy to format my main drive as well, but this problem seems like it only needs a trivial fix.
I think Dropbox might have solved the problem in the latest update. As of now, I no longer have this problem and can use my ext4 drive to host Dropbox, no matter how deep or shallow I go in the directory hierarchy. Previously, it seemed that Dropbox only likes to be hosted 3 levels down the root, but this issue seems to have been fixed.
While I've been very frustrated with Dropbox for this annoying issue, I take the opportunity to thank Walter for conveying our discomfort to the developers. I wish you all a new year full of prosperity and better customer support :)
Cheers,
AminThe problem in my case was the following. The ext4 partition was mounted to /home/ but the Dropbox folder was specified as /<PCname>/<Username>/Dropbox where /<PCname> was symbolic link to /home/ . Since the root partition (/) is not ext4 Dropbox refused to sync to the specified folder. After changing the Dropbox folder to /home/<Username>/Dropbox it was accepted and after 20hours of new syncing it is working fine now.
By the way, the Linux packages of dropbox are GPL. I thought this would mean access to the code...
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hey there Axiom2018 - sorry to hear about this.
If you have formatted your drive to be ext4 you shouldn't be getting this message. Note that if you received a notification and you are running ext4, it may be because you are also running ecryptfs. Ecrypfts is not supported.
Could this be the reason behind this?
Hi.
No, ecrypt is not running, it's actually not even installed. Here's the df -Th output
/dev/sdb1 ext4 459G 70M 435G 1% /media/daryl/storage500GB
I read somewhere here about having it on the same drive as / , is that correct? If so, I'm not going to format my system just to use dropbox.
I also checked and removed an old install from 2 years ago thinking it could have been that machine (not likely in my mind since the app wouldn't let me select the drive in my current machine but who knows) and still have the same issue.
- Walter
Thanks for the update Axiom2018!
Have you tried installing our software normally and then point the Dropbox folder to the drive you'll be using ( the ext4 )? If so, are you still getting this message?
Also, could you please verify that your device's setup is meeting our minimum requirements and that it's actually supported?
So, this means that it is no longer possible to use Dropbox when ecryptfs is also running?
I'm in the same boat. After getting an email about my Linux server running 18.04 needed to be on ext4, I moved files all around and had to format my large drive that was still on ext3. After going to all of the trouble, it didn't like the partion, complaining that it still wasn't ext4. My fstab looks fine, so I think they have a bug.
UUID=blahblah /media/HD_1500_SAMSUNG ext4 rw,user,exec,auto,user_xattr 0 0
I'm using Dropbox v60.4.107. I had to put the Dropbox folder up one level (/media/HD_1500_SAMSUNG/DropboxContainer/Dropbox). Thank you AminSadeghi, your suggestion worked.
For a paying customer ($99) a year, I would think my setup is a common one. I have an SSD as the OS disk and spinners for my large storage disks. My Dropbox 1T account is on my spinners since it can take up that much space. I can see how they can't support all of these file systems, but they need to fix the only one they now support.
Weird thing happend to me, which meant I was able to resolve this issue,
On 3 linux machines (2x Ubuntu 1x Ubuntu-Mate VM) all had this issue,
I thought ok well lets create a new partition for dropbox anyway.When I used GParted and created a small partition of Ext4 if fixed the original
problem of dropbox not recognising my original partition as a valid file type.
After the repartition upon reboot into Linux dropbox started working again.
It must be something to do with a Ubuntu install not setting something quite
properly that then dropbox reads as not geninue. GParted seemed to fix it.Now I have a spare partition on every machine I don't need :/
Anyway it was good to get it fixed.
Hi!
I found the library dropbox-filesytem-fix on github, this fixed the same error for me!This is the library:
https://github.com/dark/dropbox-filesystem-fix
Here are the instructions.
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/11/how-to-use-dropbox-on-non-ext4.html
I have founfd a simple solution!
1. make a new directory as root user in the root directory (eg. "drop")
2. set the rights of this directory for the standart-user.
3. make this directory default in the dropbox-settings.
Thats it
It is quite frustrating and I believe dropbox support have not been very helpful here more than stating what FS they do support.
I started off with my problem with ext4 & ecrypfs on ubuntu 18.04. and as many others have managed to fix it by trying different approaches ending up in /var/<user>/Dropbox which is / partition of ext4 type managed under lvm.
But it didn't work under /home partition which is also ext4 and manged under lvm.
Both partitions are enabled with user_xattr since I could use setfattr/getfattr tools properly.What bothers me is that none of us can really pinpoint the problem, and since its closed source we cannot help each other in a good way. One would expect better technical support from dropbox explaining what triggers the check to fail leading to the error message.
If you cannot help us, just dump part of the source code around the error message.
