Showing posts with label dropbox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dropbox. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Fix: Dropbox Fails To Start With "VerificationError: importing pylinux..." Bug

Dropbox logo

Some Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian and Arch Linux (and probably other Linux distributions) users are experiencing problems with Dropbox. It seems that some recent Python update breaks Dropbox (it doesn't affect new installations though), resulting in the following error:

Starting Dropbox...Traceback (most recent call last):
File "dropbox/client/main.py", line 13, in
File "autogen_explicit_imports.py", line 13, in
File "ui/common/selective_sync.py", line 6, in
File "arch/__init__.py", line 28, in
File "arch/linux/tracing.py", line 8, in
File "hard_trace.py", line 6, in
File "client_api/connection_hub.py", line 21, in
File "client_api/kv_connection.py", line 23, in
File "pylinux/__init__.py", line 71, in
File "cffi/api.py", line 311, in verify
File "dropbox/overrides.py", line 398, in load_library
File "cffi/verifier.py", line 69, in load_library
File "cffi/verifier.py", line 154, in _load_library
File "cffi/vengine_cpy.py", line 124, in load_library
VerificationError: importing '/home/andrei/pylinux/__pycache__/_cffi__xa0c4f46bx1d95b4de.so': No module named _cffi__xa0c4f46bx1d95b4de

Simply reinstalling Dropbox doesn't fix this issue, but it is pretty easy to fix anyway.

To fix this Dropbox error in Ubuntu / Linux Mint / Debian, open a terminal and run the following commands:
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox/.dropbox-dist
dropbox start -i
This will remove the downloaded Dropbox binaries and redownload them. Once the download is done, Dropbox should start.

I'm not sure how to fix it for Arch Linux or other Linux distributions though, because the path is probably different but basically you must look for the .dropbox-dist folder (not the one in your home directory), remove it and run "dropbox start -i".


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Thursday, October 15, 2015

Dropbox UI Rewritten In Qt For Latest Experimental Linux & Windows Builds

The Dropbox Windows and Linux user interface is currently in the process of being rewritten in Qt and an experimental build (2.11.0) with this and other changes is already available for testing.

According to the forum notes, the reason behind the UI rewrite is to "fix a large number of issues/glitches you have reported over the years, improve performance, support high DPI on Windows, a new setup wizard on Linux, and more". It's also important to add that the new "UI is still rough around the edges so expect to see some things looking not quite right" for now. 

Here are a couple of screenshots with the latest Dropbox Qt UI running in Ubuntu 14.04:

Dropbox Qt UI Linux

Dropbox Qt UI Linux

I tested the latest Dropbox experimental build on Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) and it worked properly for me, but the memory usage was pretty high initially: about 200-210 MiB (it decreased to about 70 MiB of RAM after about 30 minutes - Dropbox was idle the whole time). Furthermore, some users on the Dropbox forums mention an increase in memory usage on Windows too. However, this is an experimental build and bugs are to be expected.

Besides the UI rewrite, the new (still experimental) Dropbox 2.11 series also brings:
  • file identifiers, which enable Dropbox to detect when files have been moved and renamed. In the future, file identifiers will be used to improve features such as Previous versions. For now, this change should be invisible;
  • Windows long path support: Dropbox on Windows now supports paths longer than 260 characters however, many applications such as Windows Explorer and Microsoft Word do not;
  • new Linux headless setup flow;
  • faster uploads for small files;
  • updated splash screens;
  • new Finder icon overlays.


How to test the latest experimental Dropbox with Qt UI in Linux


If you want to test the latest Dropbox experimental build (not recommended - if you want to revert this change, your Dropbox account will be re-linked and that make take a long time, depending on your Internet connection and the size of your Dropbox), you can update your current Dropbox installation on Linux by using the following commands in a terminal:

- 32bit:
sudo apt-get install wget
dropbox stop
cd && wget https://d1ilhw0800yew8.cloudfront.net/client/dropbox-lnx.x86-2.11.0.tar.gz
tar -xvf dropbox-lnx.x86-2.11.0.tar.gz
dropbox start
rm dropbox-lnx.x86-2.11.0.tar.gz

- 64bit:
sudo apt-get install wget
dropbox stop
cd && wget https://d1ilhw0800yew8.cloudfront.net/client/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.11.0.tar.gz
tar -xvf dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.11.0.tar.gz
dropbox start
rm dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.11.0.tar.gz

If later on you want to revert these changes and go back to the stable, non-Qt Dropbox version, use the following commands:
dropbox stop
rm -r .dropbox-dist/
dropbox start

Or grab the latest experimental Dropbox builds from HERE (available for Linux, Windows and Mac).

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