I’m really fishing here. Brand new framework, installed my usual OS that I run on two other of my desktop PCs: fedora Linux. Everything is fine except for Dropbox. I’ve been running fedora and dropbox together for about a decade now, without any issues. But on this laptop (see specs below) I cannot get it to run. It installs fine - but upon logging into my dropbox account it just is stuck saying “Starting…” Never gets past that. It makes no sense. No other errors. Nothing in the journal points to anything. Dropbox support has been unable to help so far.
There is one other possible clue tho. Of about a dozen devices on my home network, only this Framework laptop triggers a DHCP override condition in my AT&T fiber gateway that causes it to rename the laptop’s hostname. When I researched that, it happens when the AT&T gateway device “sees” some sort of DHCP error and then acts to fix it (i.e., it appends ‘…attlocal.net…’ to the hostname I configured in fedora.
So - is there something a bit different about the Framework’s WiFi / networking hardware or stack that might cause it to be the only device on my network to trigger this condition; and be the only device in my house that refuses to connect to the the dropbox servers?
Grasping at straws here…..
My Framework System:
Operating System: Fedora Linux 43
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.7-200.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 w/ Radeon 890M
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.6 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 890M Graphics
Manufacturer: Framework
Product Name: Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series)
System Version: A9
I just installed fedora kde on my framework 16 last night for troubleshooting arch freezing. Are you using the flakpak version or the version downloaded from dropbox? I can see if mine suffers the same fate.
That’d be great to get a 2nd data-point. I’m using the version downloaded from the dropbox site. The fedora .rpm installer file @ Install Dropbox for Linux
Well it worked for me at least and I have the same CPU in my framework 16. I did do a little googling and there have been people experiencing the “starting” bug for a while but I didn’t see anyone with any suggestions on how to fix it, at least none that reported as successful.
Ok, thanks for trying it and letting me know. It’s probably good that I now know it works for at least one person - but, you know, misery loves company, lol.
Yeah - based on google search it has been an on-again/off-again issue for several years. Most folks seem to get it solved with a remove/reinstall. Which I’ve tried now a few times to no avail tho.
I figured this out. Ya-all are going to smirk at me, rightly so. Let me start by stating what my intentions were, which will help to make sense of it.
Intention: I have two SSDs installed in the laptop. My intention was to use one for the OS and all the apps. Then dedicate the 2nd SSD to being only a replica of my Dropbox. This way I could futz around with the OS, mess it up, then reformat and reinstall the OS and apps without having to resync my whole Dropbox across the network each time.
The Error: I created a mount point for the Dropbox folder under my home directory. And I named it “Dropbox.” In my naïveté I assumed that Dropbox you would see this and do it’s thing. To make a long story short: Well, it did see it, but it couldn’t gain access to it. Instead of telling the user this key fact it just hung there, forever, waiting to be granted access. No message to the user. No attempt to create an alternative directory for itself. Not even any entries in the journal. This last one, no journal entries, I do find pretty unforgivable on the part of the Dropbox developers (even tho at base it was my error).
The Solution: I moved the mount point for the SSD into the /media directory (as /media/SSD-dropbox-local). Dropbox then fired up and started syncing. I used it’s ‘Preferences…’ to move the sync location to the mounted SSD in /media. Then I added the Dropbox folder at /media/SSD-dropbox-local to my ‘places’ list in Dolphin.
Yeah now that you mention it, I forgot that fedora’s install doesn’t let you easily edit the drive layout the way the other distros I have tried which make it very easy to have a separate partition for /home. Some even ask if you want a separate partition for home during the install process. That is usually what I have been doing so my home folder can survive reinstalls.
Right - the fedora installer used to allow that. It used to have a whole section for configuring your drives and partitions as part of it’s install process. Apparently they’ve decided to go the sort of Apple route of trying to make it super simple. Which I can understand. But it’d be nice to have an ‘Advanced’ option during the install.
