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I hope this isn't a silly question for which I'm missing an obvious answer... So: because of the lockdown, my wife and I need to both work on the same desktop (Ubuntu 18.04) and we use dropbox to store quite a large amount of files. The desktop is decent, but not the newest (so our combined dropbox folders would almost fill up the hard drive) and so I've moved the dropbox folders on an external hard drive. I have then modified my /etc/fstab file to instruct the system to mount /mnt/external/me onto /home/me/Dropbox and /mnt/external/my_wife onto /home/my_wife/Dropbox at start up (I've used the bind option, something like in this).

All is fine and the files appear where they should be. But the dropbox seems to need to re-sync all of them everytime the computer is started --- while in fact, only a handful (or a few, anyway) will have changed from the previous time. I did of course let the machine do a full sync yesterday, so I was expecting the dropbox to be fully up-to-date.

Am I missing something obvious here? And has anybody some experience in something like that? Hope I'm making some sense

Thanks!

Gianluca

Gianluca Baio
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  • Where did you move your dropbox folder to? Maybe this resource might help https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/11/how-to-use-dropbox-on-non-ext4.html – graham May 13 '20 at 13:00
  • Also see https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/07/maestral-is-new-open-source-dropbox.html – graham May 13 '20 at 13:17
  • Thanks --- I moved the dropbox to an external HDD that I did format as ext4, which I think is not a problem as far as DB is concerned? Also, although I think I've disabled the USB autosuspend, the HDD tends to simply drift off and self-unmount and so I need to re-mount it.... Is this a common side-effect? – Gianluca Baio May 13 '20 at 14:12
  • Maybe. Have you seen this resource about creating a live USB drive with persistent storage? https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/ – graham May 13 '20 at 18:15
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    Just to follow up --- I have now used a new external HD and it seems like the problems have gone (hope I'm not jinxing it... :-)). I'll post again if things continue to happen and update people in case it's of interest to others... I'll check the link on howtogeek too! Thanks. Gianluca – Gianluca Baio May 14 '20 at 15:07

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