Dropbox not completely syncing

[bikermiker]

Mine works for the most part when there is not much activity. I say for the most part because if you try to change a folder name while files within it are syncing, I will get orphaned files / folders. Other than that as long as I'm not moving around lots of files it seems to be ok. But not being able to move around a lot of files is really not ok.

I took the same steps you did to revive dropbox twice now and it seems to have worked both times. Have you looked through your files for illegal characters?

Hmmm.... I should look for illegal characters in Google Drive as that is not completely syncing like yours....

[joe]

After resuming the process and letting it burn CPU cycles and thrash disks for 15 hours it appears to have started sync'ing again. I'm going to let it keep going and it might even get there after a few more days of hardware destruction but I'm far from happy with the way this is behaving:

The dropboxd process using 100% of any core it chooses:

busy cores

Screenshot.2016-09-06.21.53.45.png (157.88 KiB) Viewed 15644 times

The process hovering continuously around 20-25%:

busy dropboxd

Screenshot.2016-09-06.21.54.07.png (85.87 KiB) Viewed 15644 times

[bikermiker]

Do you have an update?

When mine is syncing the activity looks like that as well. Mine will just stop running altogether and activity monitor shows nothing. Sync for Dropbox just shows indexing on local. Who knows if it's running or not?

[joe]

The ticket remains open with support and they tell me that they're trying to reproduce the problem in their lab. It's been over a week now and given how obviously bad this is I'm not sure how hard they're trying.

In the meantime I've left the process running and it looks like it's synced most of my 4.7GB of data but it doesn't appear to be settling into a reasonable idling state and it does seem intent on thrashing my hard disks to death with continuous read / write activity

I'd say asustor have created effective NAS destruction software

[joe]

The latest from support:

We've tested the Datasync for Dropbox with about 60000 files(4.4GB) and the synchronization task was done in 3 days.
However we do find it will consume more CPU resource when syncing specific file(in the test we performed in our lab, its gif file)
So, would you please help to let the app syncing again and wait for 3~4 days to see if its still can't finish.
If its still not able to finish the sync task, please provide the Cloud ID of your NAS and the admin account's password for us to connect to your NAS remotely and check it.

To which I responded:

As I said in my last post in this ticket, this is my latest: http://forum.asustor.com/viewtopic.php? ... =10#p25804. Please read it.

If you read the forum post you'll see that I've said it looks like sync has eventually synced most if not all of my data after torturing my NAS CPU and disks for days. You'll also see that I'm not happy with the way this app seems intent on constantly thrashing my disks with read / write activity when enabled.

This is why I said in my last post in this ticket that I don't intend to start this process again for fear of it causing hardware failure. I won't be starting this process again.

I'm happy for you to connect and take a look. My NAS cloud Id is <redacted>. I'll send you my NAS admin password if you can advise a way for me to get it to you securely.

I won't be sending my NAS admin password to the ticket over port 80 and they've not come back with any method for me to get the password to them in a secure way. I get the feeling this issue is going the way of "closed, won't fix"

[bikermiker]

You could crypto a text file and have a rep call you and give them the password verbally.

We've tested the Datasync for Dropbox with about 60000 files(4.4GB)

WTF?! REALLY? 4 DAYS?

No wonder I am having issues moving picture folders around. Some folders have 5+ GB in them.

Anytime I have to move lots of folders around I have been COMPLETELY WIPING the DB folder, reinstalling the app and then downloading everything from DB to the NAS. I mean... That doesn't take nearly as long as syncing that MIGHT complete in 3-4 days? Should I expect it to take 1 day to sync for every GB of data I have? That's 2 years!! Is 2 years a satisfactory time to sync 700GB?

[joe]

Yeah there are a number of ways they could offer customers to get a password to the support team securely. They never did come back with any suggestions.

In the end I gave up and uninstalled this because it was intent on thrashing my disks to death and showed no signs of stopping.

The best way I found to monitor what it was actually doing was to watch https://www.dropbox.com/events to see what the dropbox side believed was happening and what I witnessed was hard to believe: files were being added / uploaded that didn't / don't exist in the local sync folder. Lots of files that look like copies of valid files with (1) in the filename were being uploaded to dropbox.

e.g. here's a single example of what I'm talking about - one example of a countless number exactly like this:

• This file does exist in the local sync folder hierarchy and should be uploaded: ESP8266WiFiScan.cpp.o. (and it was)
• This file does not exist in the local sync folder hierarchy but it was uploaded and ended up in dropbox anyway: ESP8266WiFiScan.cpp(1).o

Explain that one!

Following that looking more closely at the https://www.dropbox.com/events page, I noticed it was also deleting these ghost like files with (1) in the filename. Little wonder it was thrashing my hard disks to death. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was also deleting valid files and re-uploading them continually for random unexplained reasons.

IMO this is nowhere near ready for real world use at the moment.

The support ticket is not receiving any feedback from the support team any more and on 18/09 I left this parting message on there which I think they're interpreting as "leave this ticket open forever":

I've uninstalled this app. If a new version is released in future with a published change log that looks like it addresses the issues I've reported, I might give it another try.

I'm leaving it with you guys to decide whether you think there's anything that needs to be fixed related to the issues I've reported in this ticket and the related forum thread.

Feel free to close this ticket if there's nothing that needs to be addressed.

[lanimul]

That's weak. 4.4 gb in 3 days.... Pathetic.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[joe]

That's weak. 4.4 gb in 3 days.... Pathetic.

I'm not sure what aspect of this debacle you're criticizing by saying this but I have to say we can't blame asustor for poor upload speeds to the dropbox service because dropbox is a service well known for poor upload performance. Here's one of many monster threads about this issue that remains unresolved: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/c ... peeds-Why-

I do however hold asustor responsible for releasing this app in a state where it continually thrashes my hard disks with read/write activity. This problem is 100% on the NAS / asustor side and there's no way to defend this.

From my point of view I wouldn't be bothered if it took a week or even longer to upload my 4.7GB of data so long as:

1) It actually did get there in the end and when it was done it could be trusted to have uploaded all of the data
2) It didn't destroy the NAS in process of doing (1)
3) It settled into a reasonable idle state having done (1) when there's little data changing in the local NAS sync folder

[bikermiker]

The original "dropbox" app that Asustor used to provide worked well until an Asustor update ruined it with no prior warning that they were moving to the "DataSync for Dropbox" app.

I'm going to start a support ticket as well.

lanimul wrote:
That's weak. 4.4 gb in 3 days.... Pathetic.

I use Dropbox a very significant amount daily. No device or program services that upload to dropbox have been that agonizingly slow. I use it on 2 Macs, 3 PCs, 2 iphones, 1 ipad and the Asustor. My upload speeds at home are slow but max out when uploading large amounts of data to dropbox. I only have 3Mbps upload (hey.... it's free) but it does not take 4 days to upload. Asustor is saying 4 days to sync. Something is very very wrong.