Dropbox won't start anymore

Question

Since a while, 2 weeks, Dropbox does not startup anymore on my laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with GNOME shell.

When I run dropbox start -i in the console I get the following output.

  Starting Dropbox...Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1387, in <module>
    ret = main(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1376, in main
    result = commands[argv[i]](argv[i+1:])
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1247, in start
    if not start_dropbox():
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 731, in start_dropbox
    stderr=sys.stderr, stdout=f, close_fds=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1249, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
  OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

I already removed Dropbox and reinstalled it. What should I do to fix this?

score 36 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 03 '14 at 00:01

36

I had a similar error, and this worked:

rm -rf $HOME/.dropbox-dist
dropbox start -i

After running those commands in the terminal, let the dropbox downloader run and install. It should work immediately after it finishes.

edited Sep 03 '14 at 00:01

Kamil Slowikowski

235

answered Feb 05 '14 at 22:53

morhook

1,610
14
23

1

This worked for me on Ubuntu 14.04. – Kamil Slowikowski Sep 02 '14 at 23:17
This one worked for me too on Ubuntu 14.04 – Kuruyiva Apr 03 '16 at 16:48
Worked for me, Linux Mint 17.1 (October 2016 today) – KajMagnus Oct 12 '16 at 15:11
Worked for me on Ubuntu 17.04! – bryant1410 May 21 '17 at 22:57
Just worked on 20.04 – Max Wallace Mar 11 '23 at 17:51

score 26 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 17 '15 at 15:59

26

I had the same problem and found this fix

Basically, I fixed the error by reinstalling dropbox distribution with the following terminal commands:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox/.dropbox-dist
dropbox start -i

edited Jan 17 '15 at 15:59

Alistair Buxton

6,722

answered Feb 03 '14 at 15:19

user186476

361
3
2

1

not sure if it has since been updated, but I am 4.2.5-1-ARCH, and it was located at $HOME/.dropbox-dist as @morhook suggested below (http://askubuntu.com/a/416981/307798) – dylnmc Dec 04 '15 at 17:00
Worked for me, thanks very much for your answer. Ubuntu desktop - 14.04 LTS 64 Bit – ynnekkram Feb 12 '16 at 08:53
1

For some reason I had the directory under both /var/lib/dropbox/ and $HOME. There was an older version in the former. – jarno Jan 11 '17 at 07:10

efthialex · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-04T12:35:27.887

25

Try to reinstall dropbox.

First open a terminal and type the following to remove dropbox:

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --purge remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

Now type the next commands in sequence to install dropbox.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 5044912E
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main"
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropbox

Source

edited Feb 04 '13 at 12:35

answered Feb 04 '13 at 11:13

efthialex

3,831

1

This worked for me apart from apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 5044912E That command just hung. Doing the purge, update and install of Dropbox seemed sufficient. – Giles Roberts Feb 04 '13 at 11:55
Sorry but this did not work for me. Firstly I installed dropbox and not nautilus-dropbox.
I got the following error `W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://linux.dropbox.com precise Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY FC918B335044912E

W: Failed to fetch http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/Release

W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.`
– WG- Feb 04 '13 at 12:31
4

The following packages have unmet dependencies: nautilus-dropbox : Depends: dropbox but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. – WG- Feb 04 '13 at 12:32
2

Then try this to install it: cd ~ && wget -O - "http://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf - and to run type this: ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd – efthialex Feb 04 '13 at 12:37
/.dropbox-dist/dropbox: Syntax error: "(" unexpected :( – WG- Feb 04 '13 at 12:59
4
delete the .dropbox-dist folder from your home.
open a terminal and type: dropbox start
then type dropbox start -i to link your account

efthialex

Feb 04 '13 at 13:19

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 06 '15 at 08:10

I had the same issue but none of this worked. But I found there was a running dropbox process. Even when I asked the status it showed as stopped and it didn't work at all.

My solution was to kill the dropbox process, remove the .dropbox-dist directory and run it again.

First find the dropbox process:

$ ps ax | grep dropbox
5490 ?        SNsl   0:01 /home/frankie/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86-2.10.52/dropbox
$ kill -TERM 5490

Then remove the dist dir and start it again

$ rm .dropbox/dropbox.pid
$ dropbox start -i

Hope this helps.

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 17 '16 at 07:31

The only way I could fix it (luckily everything was already synced) was by doing ... (Don't do this is you haven't backed things up or the files are not synced):

sudo apt-get remove --purge dropbox # (for me this was actually sudo pacman -Rncs dropbox because I am on arch ... basically, you just need to remove it)

find / -name "\*ropbox\*" 2>/dev/null

Remove everything associated with the dropbox (including $HOME/.dropbox-dist, $HOME/Dropbox (will wipe your data obviously, so back it up into a temp. directory or something!!), etc).

No clue why this stopped working, but doing rm -rf $HOME/.dropbox-dist unfortunately didn't work for me.

Hope this helps.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 16 '16 at 17:21

0

Uninstall and then follow the official instructions:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

answered Aug 16 '16 at 17:21

e18r

259
8
11

Dropbox won't start anymore

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