
Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems - ronjouch
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255
======
shittyadmin
It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer
entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - probably
doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't
set correctly when used through ecryptfs.

If instead you used dmcrypt and encrypted the whole device or partition you'd
probably have no issue as it looks just like any other EXT4 FS to the system.

Would be a lot better if they specified what features they need the underlying
FS to support.

~~~
rcarmo
Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu
variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it.

That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is
pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive
client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for
Dropbox.

~~~
eloff
I get a terabyte free with onedrive, because of the office subscription. I
wish I had a good way to utilize it on Linux.

~~~
owaislone
Out of curiosity, what happens if you office subscription ends? Obviously you
won't be able to sync but does onedrive have some sort of grace period to let
you download your stuff and at what point would it go and completely delete
your data?

~~~
fencepost
If it's the business version, you have full access for 30 days, admins have
access for 90 days, then it's deprovisioned (source:
[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-happens-to-
my-...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-happens-to-my-data-and-
access-when-my-Office-365-for-business-subscription-
ends-4436582f-211a-45ec-b72e-33647f97d8a3))

On the O365 Personal/Home or direct OneDrive plans, it looks like your data
remains available but read-only for 3 months, then your account is "frozen."
You can do a one-time 30-day "unfreeze" to get access to download/delete (to
get under your quota), then it gets "frozen" again. Eventually it'll be
deleted, but I don't see documentation for how long that takes. (source:
[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-does-it-
mean-w...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-does-it-mean-when-
your-onedrive-account-is-frozen-5e76147b-b7d5-4bcb-ba28-b91e3eb636b6) linked
from [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-storage-
pl...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneDrive-storage-plan-and-
billing-questions-989fce19-ade6-4e2f-81fb-941eabefee28))

------
anderspitman
For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork
of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others
have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of
software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous
for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get
it to work. I'm confident it will eventually, though. It's a fairly new
feature if I'm not mistaken. For now, if I really just need to get a file from
point A to point B right now, I used File Pizza.

~~~
jploh
I used to use ownCloud. Just curious - why is it not in your list of
alternatives? Did the project die?

~~~
binomialxenon
Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud that's led by the original Owncloud developer,
and it seems to be more popular with the free software and Linux community. It
looks like both are still active.

~~~
Walkman
Nextcloud is the successor of ownCloud.

------
thomasfedb
The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" \-
of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most
popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?

~~~
wlesieutre
I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still
qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of
desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare.

That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.

~~~
masklinn
According to shittyadmin, it's not even encryption it's encryption _with
ecryptfs_.

------
epberry
I basically only use Dropbox because it is supported on Linux. Also its
syncing technology is sooo much better than Google Drive you would think Drive
was built by interns. However, they are taking their sweet time with newer
features like Smart Sync. It's disappointing because I'm paying for these
features and yet they're not supported on one of the platforms my whole
company uses. All in all I really hope Dropbox doesn't keep chipping away at
Linux - I fought hard internally to use it and I don't want to be proven
wrong.

~~~
thomasfedb
There's a decent open source sync daemon for OneDrive on Linux - I'm the
packager who looks after it on Fedora. With the odd exception when APIs change
it just works.

~~~
copperx
OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos.

~~~
fencepost
_OneDrive doesn 't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos._

This does not appear to still be the case based on testing just now (creating
a folder named ".foldername", containing a file named ".testfile" then
verifying that they've synced up to OneDrive). Several years ago it didn't
support syncing folders with a . in the name, but that was resolved 3 years
ago.

With Microsoft's relatively new focus on Git, I can't imagine that problems
with repositories stored in OneDrive folders would remain unfixed.

I will note that there are names that Windows Explorer won't let you create -
notably, names beginning with a ".". That's an Explorer issue, not a OneDrive
or filesystem issue - you can create such files and folders programmatically
or from a command prompt.

~~~
mwilliaams
I think you can do that in explorer if you change some of the options.

------
nebulous1
It appears this might be related to dropbox (mis)using statfs's f_fsid field
as part of its authentication system. The dropbox devs apparently assumed that
this field was stable, but on XFS (for instance) it can change.

dropboxforum thread here: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-
desktop-app...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-
app/Dropbox-on-OpenSUSE-Leap-15-Linux-unlinks-after-
restart/td-p/278624/page/3)

~~~
chadaustin
That sounds to me like the most likely hypothesis in this thread.

I mean, the Linux manpage itself says it's stable and can be used, with the
inode number, to uniquely identify a file. [http://man7.org/linux/man-
pages/man2/statfs.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html)

I'm not surprised, though. Fancy copy-on-write filesystems like btrfs have
some other subtle gotchas. If you allocate (like, really, not as a hole) a big
file on btrfs and mmap it for write, you might see a SIGBUS upon writing
because btrfs needed to recompress a block and the new compressed block didn't
fit where the old one did.

I've gained a new appreciation for the predictability and simplicity of ext4.

------
dmoreno
Another alternative is nextcloud... It also has a sync desktop client and
works great in my company for sharing folders with colleagues or keep business
documents in sync on desktop and laptop.

There are even third parties that install it and manage it for you.

[1] [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)

------
kilian
Seeing how an encrypted home directory is as good as the default option in
Ubuntu, and seeing as it _already works now_ , this seems like a dumb move.

This is a shame because I just started using Dropbox significantly more to
back up shared photos. Time to search for something else, I guess.

~~~
nebulous1
Not in the latest Ubuntu installs. They do FDE instead of home folder
encryption.

~~~
rcarmo
The option to encrypt your home folder is still there in Ubuntu 18.04 (which I
set up only yesterday), and appears after you set up volumes upon initial user
creation.

It is (funnily enough) even possible to enable _both_ kinds of encryption
simultaneously.

I'd say that they don't use full-disk encryption _instead_ of home folder.
They just prompt for it sooner (and it is not the same thing if you have a
modestly old machine, or a machine you share with other users).

~~~
sp332
I just spun up an 18.04.1 install in a VM to check, and I don't see an option
to encrypt the user's homedir during installation.

Edit: It's listed under "Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS"
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes)

~~~
zaarn
IIRC it does show if you use the advanced installer option (ie where you go
manually through all steps).

Atleast the ubuntu server does that, though I wouldn't enable that either way
since it's a pain to deal with from the outside.

------
koolba
Excluding XFS is an odd choice as it's _very_ common in the server world.

I'm assuming encryptfs-ext4 has some attribute issue that prevents them for
doing efficient deltas. That aside, what's the use case for encryptfs at all?
Isn't it strictly worse than LUKS on the underlying volume or a volume file
mounted via loopback?

~~~
gnufied
I would hold my horses on xfs being unsupported claim. They explicitly said
any modern file system with xattr is supported. XFS does fit that description.
OP has drawn his own conclusions from the Dropbox reply.

~~~
Vash63
My /home is XFS on my Arch system and I received the same popup from the
Dropbox client. I can confirm that this does apply to XFS as well.

~~~
spacenick88
Same for Btrfs

------
Benjamin_Dobell
Ugh, I use Dropbox on several platforms, some NTFS, some APFS, some HFS and
_exFAT_. The majority of my files are synced to exFAT because it's the only
bloody filesystem that's officially supported across all major OS. No it
doesn't support extended attributes and I don't care, 95% of my files are
photos!

If Dropbox go ahead with this I'm bailing. The only reason I use a managed
service like this is so I don't have to care about the technical details
(filesystems etc.)

------
mynegation
As a developer I understand that each supported filesystem adds development
workload and potential for bugs and at some point you need to weigh this cost
against the benefit. The problem with this is that the people who use these
filesystem are more likely to be opinion makers for other people in the choice
of file syncing solution. Dropbox is big enough so they think they do not have
to worry about it. But there is a real possibility that they will alienate
just enough influential people, that this will erode their user base more than
they realize.

------
Walkman
This is exactly why I stopped using Dropbox and moved everything I have to my
own [https://nextcloud.com](https://nextcloud.com) instance. It's very easy to
install and upgrade, it is stable, have way more features than Dropbox and you
have total control over your own data. Overall a superior experience. If they
would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be
done with it or just copy the files out of the /data/Nextcloud folder and move
to another one open solution.

~~~
dylan-m
I set up a little Ubuntu Core server with Nextcloud for archives and sharing,
and Syncthing for slightly cleverer sync of files I'm actively working with.
Syncthing is decentralized, and it's designed so you can just pick any folder
and sync it between your devices, which makes for a really handy workflow. But
I like good having a long-running server in the middle that I can treat as
canonical. That way I have one place for backups, my devices can sync with the
server over the Internet when they don't have each other, and I can access
Syncthing files via Nextcloud.

I was expecting to still be using Dropbox for a while after that, but it's
been surprisingly low maintenance after the initial setup, and it has replaced
it perfectly for me :) Highly recommended for anyone bothered by this change.

~~~
StavrosK
This echoes my experience exactly. I use Syncthing for all the documents I
don't need a web UI for or that I don't need accessible on mobile (only
between computers), such as my ebooks, PDFs, things like that, and Nextcloud
for everything else.

------
vxNsr
Dropbox isn't even the cheapest or best file syncing service, they're
basically all a commodity at this point and if they don't want you as
customers... just go elsewhere.

~~~
mxuribe
Would you kindly provide recommendations? I'm looking for a sync service which
can run on windows AND linux (which is why onedrive and google drive are
out)...and i'm willing to pay a fair monthly fee.

~~~
justinclift
rsync.net seems to get mentioned around here every now and again. I haven't
used them though personally, so not sure of good/bad/etc.

Unlike what their name (rsync) suggests, they do seem to support Windows
clients and aren't *nix only:

[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows.html)

~~~
lreeves
The documentation for the Windows client (1) almost seems like a joke. In the
screenshots the text gets cut off in the UI, there's sentences that say "don't
use this versioning feature we're about to talk about" and tons of text that's
been striked-through. There's also zero mention if the client supports backing
up open files via volume shadow snapshots which is basically requirement
number one for any Windows backup client.

1 -
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.h...](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.html)

~~~
rsync
We're really all about the direct unix to unix connection.

The point of rsync.net is that you can log onto any unix system, anywhere, and
interact with your cloud storage - with no software installation or
configuration necessary.

The Windows Backup Agent works very well and has recently been updated but the
documentation you are seeing reflects the fact that it is a secondary function
here at rsync.net that is mostly provided for the convenience of customers in
mixed environments.

We are _not_ a dropbox alternative.

------
brightball
I continue to wonder about Dropbox's support for Linux. It's been the primary
reason that I use them so heavily and recommend them so often.

If you look at the filename on the linux download is says 2015 in the
filename. Has the linux client gone untouched for 3 years?

------
8077628
This is a tragic decision on Dropbox's part. The service's popularity is a
product of it being stable and running everywhere. If they start pulling back
compatibility, where does it end? Even if this change only impacts a small
percentage of users, it threatens everyone that their compatibility may be
revoked.

Dropbox is violating their philosophy as a universal solution and squandering
their key selling point for some small cost savings. What a horrible decision.

------
londons_explore
Their reasoning of "you need a filesystem which supports extended attributes"
sounds legit.

Time for some of us to start work on adding extended attributes to more
filesystems?

~~~
jolmg
I believe all 3 filesystems have support for extended attributes, so it
doesn't seem legit.

------
xg15
This seems like the equivalent of user-agent sniffing. So even though the
problem is a feature (xattrs), they will try to detect whether or not the
filesystem is ext4 and stop syncing otherwise? Is that correct?

So, if other programs follow suit, will we start seeing options to lie about
the filesystem type?

------
scott_s
This should probably link directly to the message from the community
moderator: [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-
Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-
client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-
why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

Right now it just links to the second page of the discussion; the community
moderator's message is on the first page.

------
codemusings
Self-hosted Nextcloud instance + AWS for storage puts you somewhere around $10
to $20 per month depending on how much space you need. Just throwing it out
there.

The sync client has worked flawelessly for me so far. Plus you get
CalDAV/CardDAV right out of the box.

------
erickj
Well I for one will be taking the $0 per month that I spend on their free tier
elsewhere

------
willtim
This makes no sense. For example, XFS is a very robust and actively developed
filesystem and is now the default on many distros. It also supports xattr.

------
bayindirh
Why not run a small set of tests after installing and see whether the required
set of FS features available?

Experienced users run plethora of filesystems which support the needs of
dropbox.

IMHO, this is a lazy solution to a relatively simple problem.

~~~
gwbas1c
Most likely Dropbox needs to set these limits so that they can allocate their
quality assurance department to very thoroughly test what they claim they
support.

I'm an architect for a Dropbox competitor. Sometimes we need to draw a line in
the sand for what we support, and what we don't support. This is mostly due to
balancing cost / benefit. A customer may do something strange that we don't
support, and we have to weigh how many engineering resources it will take to
support the customer. This can apply to unusual filesystems that we don't
actively test our product with.

IMO, Dropbox did the right thing. It's only real technical users who get into
different kinds of filesystems; and these are the same kind of users who can
understand, "Dropbox only works on X, Y, and Z."

~~~
bayindirh
From a QA point you're actually right. I don't think Dropbox needs to support
all filesystems, but as a programmer and and advocate of better user
experience, I'd like to see a system which behaves a little differently:

a- FS is something we support, great! Go on... b- FS is an unsupported one, so
run the tests and if they pass warn the user: "Hey! We don't support this, but
it looks like working. If it fails we can not support you. Are you sure?
(Y/N)" c- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they fail tell the
user: "Hey! We can not work on this FS, sorry.".

The good thing is you implement the tests once. Since, POSIX standard is a
standard, so run the tests over that interface. You practically don't need to
maintain anything about the tests. Maybe run a couple of unit tests over a
simulated environment, that's all.

------
dec0dedab0de
I wonder if I'll get a prorated refund for the time I pre-paid. This is really
silly of them, the entire reason to use dropbox is because they have a client
for everything.

------
messe
Seems ludicrous when XFS is the default file system for RHEL.

~~~
awill
Yep. Dropbox is going to lose some customers. Maybe it won't be too many
(compared to Windows/Mac), but the customers they will lose will be their most
technical.

~~~
Spivak
How many customers do you think are running RHEL as a desktop workstation
_and_ allowed to use Dropbox?

~~~
user5994461
If any, I bet they can be counted on one hand.

------
F00Fbug
Syncthing will do the job. Yes, it doesn't implement a cloud store like
Dropbox. You have a couple of alternatives: 1) get a cheap vps host
(digitalocean, vultr, etc.) and make it part of your syncthing 'cluster'. 2)
get a raspberry-pi running syncthing and a big external HD and put that
somewhere else (parent's, brother's, office, etc.).

------
jchw
I gave up on Dropbox. Linux was always a second class citizen, and it only
ever seems to get worse.

If you are going to pay for something, Insync and Google Drive make a decent
Dropbox alternative. I'll be honest, though, I simply stopped using syncing
solutions like these, so I really don't know if there are now better options
across platforms.

------
izacus
Is there any good alternative that has Linux support and isn't Google Drive?
And supports shared folders?

~~~
bevax
Nextcloud

------
x0054
I have been using Resilio Sync on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and
it works a charm for me. In case this turns out to be a problem for you, maybe
give them a try. Never an issue on Linux with Resilio Sync. I run a copy on my
VPS in the cloud for remote storage.

~~~
andai
I'm about to cancel my Dropbox subscription and move to Resilio, so I wanted
to chime in and say I've had a great experience with Resilio in the past and
my friends are also using it with great results.

Btw: Resilio Sync used to be known as BitTorrent Sync.

------
dahdum
Ecryptfa is the default for new Ubuntu installs, isn’t it? They might have
well just come out and say they were dropping Linux support going forward
instead of dance around it.

Their focus seems to be on cost cutting and better value extraction than
growth and features these days.

------
tzs
Could people whose filesystem will no longer be supported work around this by
making an ext4 filesystem in a file and mounting that file via the loop
device, and moving their Dropbox directory to that?

~~~
cmurf
Yes, but it's kinda ugly for regular Joe user. You'll have to know how to
manage it: fragmentation, setting initial size and resizing, trimming, how to
automate activating and mounting it. Etc.

------
ronjouch
TL;DR:

Dropbox tells with a very unhelpful popup: _" Move Dropbox location - Dropbox
will stop syncing in November"_.

And on the forums, dropboxer Jay precises that starting Nov. 7, 2018, they're
limiting support to Windows / NTFS, macOS / HFS+ & APFS, linux/Ext4. They say
missing X-attrs support is what guides dropping other fs.

They didn't answer yet if displaying this message to users of common-through-
Ubuntu Ext4+ecryptfs is intentional.

~~~
megous
Missing xattrs? What?

~~~
ronjouch
See original message from Dropbox support:
[https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-
Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-
client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-
why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

------
SEJeff
That's cool dropbox, us Linux users prefer services like tarsnap anyways:
[http://www.tarsnap.com/](http://www.tarsnap.com/)

Colin is the founder, and also a HN celebrity because of this comment (which
he regrets, but never gets old):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

~~~
dagw
As much as I like tarsnap, comparing it Dropbox makes no sense at all. They do
completely different things.

------
mixedCase
For people looking to move to a service that supports Linux as a first class
citizen: Mega works well enough as far as syncing files goes.

~~~
otterpro
I had used Mega since it was introduced, and I had recommended it before with
its generous 50GB free space and Linux support. However, Mega had become
unreliable about a year ago, when it started to delete files after bad syncs.
Be very careful about putting important files. Also sometimes, upload speed is
very slow (took me over a minute to upload 120k file) and the sync on the iOS
became really bad - it always get stuck on "Downloading...", but fails to
sync. I hope they fix the problems, but until then, I've decided not to use
it.

------
whitexn--g28h
Aside from the performance hit, can’t users of other file systems just add a
loop back device and mount that for Dropbox?

------
cmurf
I wonder if the xattr issue has anything to do with there being adequate
abstraction of underlying file systems by the VFS? Btrfs, ext4, and XFS all
support xattr, but I don't know if they all support xattr the same way via a
single interface?

And then how does that compare on macOS where there's JHFS+/HFSX and APFS?

------
ape4
Its too bad there isn't a standard for Dropbox-like functionally yet. An RFC
that everyone can write to.

~~~
toyg
Technically there is WebDAV. Yeah I know, but it's there and it's a spec.
Another de-facto spec is rsync, iirc tarsnap was basically built on that. At
some point there might have been even a business or two that offered rsync
access.

~~~
ape4
Commercial rsync... [https://rsync.net/](https://rsync.net/)

------
wslh
Is this a new business opportunity?

~~~
geoah
Probably not as such users are just a vocal minority, and probably not enough
to use as a consumer group.

~~~
jonknee
And they _really_ hate paying for stuff. Doubly so for things they think are
simple and can be done "by myself".

~~~
megous
And you wonder why if this is what they get when they pay.

------
jolmg
So, what's the reason? I can't see it on the linked page. I would have thought
that dropbox functionality is totally filesystem independent. I can't think of
a reason why they'd do this.

EDIT: Found it.

------
WallWextra
It's a shame that btrfs seems to be dead in the water. I guess nobody with the
resources to build such a filesystem actually needs its snapshotting and
integrity features at the filesystem level?

~~~
Covzire
Does ZFS gaining steam on Linux in recent years have anything to do with the
state of btrfs?

~~~
JosephEJones
Does it really gain steam? Last time I checked the CDDL license
incompatibility with GPL made it impossible to ship ZFS with Linux, and as
such, distros have separate packages not maintained by the core team (I'm
thinking of Arch right now).

For the record I would be very glad if I could seamlessy use ZFS, but from my
perspective it looks like a lot of work that can break in unexpected places.

~~~
user5994461
ZFS is owned by Oracle now. It's more or less suicidal to embed it into any
Linux distribution.

~~~
mschout
LOL. I assume you're trolling. The official ZFS implementation has been
Illumos for years now.

~~~
user5994461
There is no trolling whatsoever. ZFS was originally made by Sun and Sun was
acquired by Oracle almost 10 years. ZFS is owned by Oracle and is a legal
minefield.

~~~
JosephEJones
One can still dream:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Oracle-Z...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Oracle-
ZFS-2017-Possibility)

------
Quppa
This appears to include ReFS on Windows (although with the creation of ReFS
volumes being limited to enterprise-targeting editions of Windows 10, perhaps
this won't affect too many people).

~~~
fuzzy2
No, it doesn’t. Only NTFS is supported: [https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-
web/system-requirements...](https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-
requirements#desktop)

------
phyzome
I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently
"uncommon". Fascinating perspective.

EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the _supported_ ones. Thanks for the
headsmack. :-)

~~~
sydd
I think you misread. NTFS is one of the supported OSes

------
rietta
What's the reason for the move? I am on LUKs+EXT4 on my development
workstation as full disk encryption on all devices is mandated by corporate
policy and our contracts with clients.

------
kbumsik
I'm fine with this cuz I'm using ext4, but why? As people in the thread say
Dropbox have been supporting those filesystems without any problems for ten
years.

------
hiccuphippo
Why do they need to directly support the underlying filesystem? Can't they
have support for the high level fs api? Sure not as performant but at least
will work.

~~~
xxpor
read the post. they need xattrs support from the file system. now, why btrfs
wouldn't work is beyond me.

------
j_h
Not really contributing anything useful. Just have to agree that this is a
terrible move. Now I have to find another cloud solution for all of my linux
computers.

------
jhack
Would this impact FUSE-based filesystems like EncFS?

~~~
binomialxenon
Definitely EncFS (which Ubuntu used to use for /home encryption), most
probably _anything_ besides ext4.

------
patrickg_zill
I keep wanting to use ZFS's incremental syncing across SSH - guess this is now
a great excuse to set it all up on a Linux laptop!

------
oneplane
Well, that's just stupid. Why not check for extended attributes, and if they
aren't there, call it unsupported.

------
mongol
Maybe I can figure out a way to automount a file formatted as ext4 in my home
directory using systemd mount units.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
And then you'll have two problems...

------
moogly
Joke's on them because I already dropped Dropbox many moons ago due to poor
performance and high price compared to the competition. Not to mention that
they hadn't released a new feature in half a decade. I'm not sure they still
have.

Also, I'm pretty sure Btrfs supports xattrs unless I'm missing something.

------
shmerl
XFS and BTRFS are uncommon? Filesystem should be transparent to such things.

------
brian_herman
Wow, I'm glad I deleted my dropbox account a while ago and now use _gasp_ hard
drives and usb sticks and github to put up all my opensource code and
bitbucket for closed source stuff.

------
raverbashing
> we’re ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with _certain uncommon
> file systems_. The supported file systems... and Ext4 for Linux.

Yeah this is not how it works. This is not how any of this works

~~~
gnufied
That statement is bit dubious. The next line also says:

> A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes
> (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We
> will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs,
> so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience.

Certainly XFS supports xattr and hence ideally should be supported. I don't
know why they singled out ext4. I am running Dropbox on ext4 LUKS encrypted
partition and I haven't seen the warning yet.

~~~
XorNot
It's because Linux users know what they're getting and store more data then
"regular" users. It's the same reason "unlimited" storage plans from Backblaze
_don 't_ have a Linux client.

~~~
vxNsr
Yeah, this is probably about cutting out the big data users. They don't even
offer an unlimited plan, but they probably noticed that certain linux users
were using most of their 2tb plans while everyone else wasn't.

Lose the most active users, keep the ones paying for something they don't
need.

~~~
scott_s
Are you and XorNot guessing, or are you basing this off a statement they made?

Because the alternate explantation I assumed is that they don't want to
continue maintaining a bunch of different filesystems. That complicates
development quite a bit (because you need to have developers who know the
quirks of the file systems) and testing _a lot_ (because all changes have to
be tested on all variants, and it becomes multiplicative when a platform has
multiple file systems).

~~~
Aaargh20318
> the alternate explantation I assumed is that they don't want to continue
> maintaining a bunch of different filesystems.

But they _don 't_ have to maintain a bunch of different filesystems. That's
the OS's job. From the application's PoV there shouldn't be _any_ difference
between these filesystems, all they need to do is check if the required
feature (xattrs) is enabled for a certain FS and that's all.

~~~
scott_s
You still need to test. And I'm skeptical that there is _no_ observable
difference from the application level.

------
fit2rule
It is time for Dropbox to die.

Seriously.

Dropbox is but a new Linux kernel module away from being completely and
utterly irrelevant.

$ insmod ifps

------
jplayer01
Well, so long Dropbox.

------
tanin
Can anyone tldr the solution? I'm on Ubuntu and get the warning (stop
syncing/move folder).

Move to where? How do I get it to work on Ubuntu again?

------
unixhero
Tragic

------
mopsled
Here is a direct link to the response from Dropbox:
[https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-
Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-
client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-
why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255)

~~~
dang
Thanks, we've changed to that from [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-
and-uploads/Linux-Dr...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-
uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-
why/m-p/290122).

------
WorkLifeBalance
No problem, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by
getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN
or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

~~~
montecarl
Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker
news post about Dropbox:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

~~~
rayiner
It’s a really great example of worse is better.[1] We went from sophisticated
network file system to a daemon that destroys your battery life (at least on
Mac) watching for file changes in a directory.

[1]
[https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html](https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)

~~~
michaelcampbell
Your situation is different than mine; this is the first I've heard of Dropbox
even _registering_ as a top use of battery.

How many files do you have? I've got 26000 files in my Mac's dropbox folder.
(Granted, very few of them change more than once or twice a day; maybe 20 or
so of those do.)

~~~
rayiner
I last used Dropbox in 2011 or so (I stopped using it because it killed my
battery life). It may have gotten better since then. (But my point is
addressed to what it takes to get popular, _i.e._ that its easier to make a
“dumb” tool popular, and Dropbox was popular back then.)

EDIT: Clearly not just me:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464901)
(thread from 2016)

~~~
michaelcampbell
> i.e. that its easier to make a “dumb” tool popular,

If this was your intent, then using the tired "worse is better" trope and
claiming an issue from 7 years ago, that no one else has claimed to have seen
is seems a far cry from it.

Dropbox became popular because it was easy, it worked, and did exactly what it
said it did. That might be "dumb" in that it's not feature packed, but you use
a lot of negative connotations when none are required.

------
kjullien
I'll still be using my good ol' rsync, old as shit, so is sh, so is grep, so
is vi, so is everything that your system is probably based on, and yet it
simply works ! How convenient.

------
seanieb
This sounds fine to me. Ya'll are making sound like they're refuseing to sync
because the FS is encryped. The file systems mentioned are really old. You can
use newer FS's that are encrypted. They need to support extended attributes
for obvious reasons.

~~~
Spivak
ext4: October 2008 btrfs: March 2009 ecryptfs: May 2016 xfs: 2002

Which one of these are old?

~~~
jeltz
XFS is from 1994, ported to Linux in 2002, so it is contemporary with NTFS
which is from 1993.

