Dropbox no longer starts

Question

I have Dropbox installed on my Ubuntu machine, which is running Ubuntu 16.04, and it has worked fine until a few days ago, when I ran some upgrades through sudo apt-get upgrade, rebooted, and now Dropbox no longer starts.

If I run dropbox start, I get the following:

Starting Dropbox...dropbox: locating interpreter
dropbox: logging to /tmp/dropbox-antifreeze-gPhIu8
dropbox: initializing
dropbox: running python 2.7.11
dropbox: setting program path '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/dropbox'
dropbox: setting home path '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114'
dropbox: setting python path '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114:/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/python-packages-27.zip'
dropbox: python initialized
dropbox: running dropbox
dropbox: setting args
dropbox: applying overrides
dropbox: running main script
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._constant_time.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._openssl.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._padding.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/psutil._psutil_linux.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/psutil._psutil_posix.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/linuxffi.pthread._linuxffi_pthread.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/tornado.speedups.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/cpuid.compiled._cpuid.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/linuxffi.resolv.compiled._linuxffi_resolv.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/posixffi.libc._posixffi_libc.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/librsyncffi.compiled._librsyncffi.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/linuxffi.sys.compiled._linuxffi_sys.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtWebKit.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtCore.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtNetwork.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtGui.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtWebKitWidgets.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtWidgets.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-42.4.114/PyQt5.QtPrintSupport.so'
Dropbox isn't running!
Done!

Furthermore, if I launch the Dropbox app, the icon appears in the dock, blinks a few times, and then disappears, with no apparent effect. If I remember right, when I first installed Dropbox, the icon would blink, and a Dropbox login page would load via Google Chrome. But that is not happening now. I can open Chrome and log in to Dropbox via the web, no problem.

Following advice below, I tried installing nautilus-dropbox with aptitude, and I get the following output:

sudo aptitude install nautilus-dropbox
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  nautilus-dropbox 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,720 B of archives. After unpacking 45.1 kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 dropbox : Breaks: nautilus-dropbox but 2015.10.28 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
1)     nautilus-dropbox [Not Installed]    

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] Y
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.

This seems to indicate that I have some missing or broken dependency, but I'm unclear on how to proceed.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

There appears to be some evidence that you manually installed dropbox possibly from here. Any attempt to install dropbox integrating packages via apt will be expecting approved versions from the repository. This I believe is the root cause of your problem. The solution is in the README file within the download archive. (Emphasis mine)

Thanks for downloading Dropbox! This is version 42.4.114 of the raw binary distribution of our syncing daemon. Normal users should not install this package manually and instead should use our main Linux package located at http://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=lnx

To remove the version that you manually installed simply reverse the instructions on line 6 of the README. In effect remove the directory (.dropbox-dist) from your home directory (~, $HOME).

Then if you want to install the dropbox recommended deb. Download the deb that matches your Ubuntu architecture from here. and install it with your favorite package manager or to install the Ubuntu recommended version as suggested by this answer you will first need to correct your situation with held broken packages, ensure that you've enabled the multiverse repository and then issue the commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nautilus-dropbox

Note that dropbox as notified upon installation you need to close and restart nautilus prior to launching dropbox and both nautilus and dropbox like all GUI applications are intended to be launched from the menu, not the command line.

Answer 2

It looks like integration between nautilus and Dropbox has been broken. You need install dropbox using repository as nautilus-dropbox is not available in repository.

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FC918B335044912E
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu/ xenial main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list' 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install dropbox 

Install dropbox daemon with following command and start it

sudo dropbox start -i 

Answer 3

Sometimes I got similar trubbles with Dropbox. I solved them by removing its distro:

rm -r /home/pascaltitle/.dropbox-dist

On next start it downloads itself again and works nice.

Answer 4

I was finally able to resolve this problem, but because of how it happened, I'm not entirely sure what single step fixed my original problem.

After trying all of the checks and solutions proposed here, I followed the instructions for an advanced reinstall at https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/advanced-reinstall. This did not seem to solve the problem. But I then discovered that I had unlinked this computer from dropbox through the website a week ago. I had done it at the time because this computer was showing up twice in my list of devices, and I thought this might be creating a problem, so I removed it.

Once I logged in to dropbox through my web browser and reestablished this computer as an authorized device for Dropbox, the Dropbox box app automatically started up, and now everything works.

This whole time, I was fully expecting the Dropbox app to launch a login page in the first place, which is why it took me so long to discover this oversight.

Thanks to all for the suggestions!