So our business Dropbox is more than 9 million files strong, I've noticed REALISTICALLY any machine handling over 2 million will just enter an indexing loop at some point from which it will never recover, after its happened 5 times in the last week I was pissed enough to that I decided I was going to find out why this is happening, I know I'm pushing the limits but we've had machines with 2.5m files running fine for years, why some work fine and some don't was a mystery, one I was determined to find out.
this crashing and restarting triggers a full reindexing of the ENTIRE database, ALL files, and since the machine is already trying to download or upload some of the new files while trying to reindex the current millions of files, doing both at once overtaxes it, which causes it to crash, and were back to square one with the infinite indexing crash loop.
This kept happening to us all the time, the only solution was to unlink and relink the Dropbox account so all pending changes were lost, we got a bunch of conflicted copies and spent days sorting out the mess.
So after looking for a while I found using Microsoft's sysinternals process monitor ( -us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon) configured in a certain way allowed me to look at EXACTLY what dropbox was doing and I found out all I just told you and another very important piece of info.
This is an absolute game changer! now if I see a machine that says "Indexing" for a long time, I turn on the process monitor, hit pause on the file syncing and watch as the machine does the indexing at super high speed (5-10 times faster than doing it while downloading), it usually finishes doing the full file reindexing in a couple of minutes once its done I can hit back resume and keep going, I've never had the app crash while doing this "offline" or "paused" indexing, thus avoiding the inevitable crash, and reindex loop.
I have been successful in recovering 4 machines from the indexing loop of death using this method, where before I was screwed and had to eat the duplicate files and cleanup for a week and a TON of annoyed users in the office.
Basically if your machine is taking too long indexing or is stuck indexing after a crash just hit "pause for 1 hour" and forget about it, it will still be working on the indexing in the background, and when it restarts it should have finished the re-index avoiding a crash when trying to download/upload the new files.
All they need to do now is let us have a "log viewer" or something so we can tell when its done doing its thing and we can hit resume, also show us, even when in pause, when its indexing and when its not, so when its done we know we can restart it safely, or the better yet, set it to where if Dropbox has to index a large volume of files (say over 100), it will automatically pause all other disk operations until the indexing is complete, then restart the downloads, trying to do both does not work, i know you want it to but it just doesn't, and just causes the whole thing to explode non stop in a loop of death, maybe enable this on a setting somewhere? or auto enable it on machines with over 500k files? something has to be able to be done.
If your Dropbox is stuck indexing, hit pause 30 mins, and let it do its thing until its done, it will keep on doing it even when paused, you wont know if its doing anything or working unless you use procmon, but its working, and try avoid using the hard drive or the machine until its done, (usually less than 30 mins), and your indexing/crashing problem will be fixed.
Dear Dropbox, Please give us a way to view this info without having to resort to third party programs, this way we can help auto troubleshoot our Dropbox issues and take a lot of load off your customer service guys.
There's another issue with slow uploads due to Dropbox connections stuck in a "stagnant state" (force closing the TCP socket connection using netmon restarts the download/upload and speed goes back up again) but that's another problem for another time.
Also worth nothing, this is not a silver bullet, theres other cases where the computer is just stuck indexing forever, those are usually caused by locked files, corrupt files, naming errors, permissions issues or other random issues having to to with the exact file in question, if this is your case this fix will not help you, but procmon will, you will know exactly what file is causing the problem instead of the "super usefull" /rolleyes "indexing 4 files" message, and you will be able to find out whats causing it and fix it.
Someone just suggested to me another great way to find out if its done indexing, when your dropbox is indexing on crappy computers it can use up to 50% of the CPU power, hit pause, you will notice the CPU will not come down, it will stay high, for a while then after a few minutes it will go down to 1-2% this is when you know that its finished indexing and you can hit resume.
Thank you for the well written easily understood post. I've experienced the same problem many years ago only to end up in LOOP hell. Fighting against the machine only caused increased aggravation and lockups.
Dealing with a multitude of files and/or excessively large files can be a nightmare to the point of overtaxing the system. Glad to know that purgatory exists in the form of pausing sync and walking away for a bit.
A full sync takes over a week on high speed internet using ethernet, so I don't want to unlink, plus there is always the fear that my latest changes would somehow roll back to the earlier changes. Confilicting file issues would also take me ages to sort out. I am trying the pause technique here to see if it fixes it for me as I have been stuck on 93 files indexing for 2 weeks.
Most of my changes are folders moving. I noticed they did changed things a little and fixed one problem, back in the day when you moved a folder it would count as extra in your allwance until it synced and removed it from where it was. but now I guess each file has a unique id and it no longer gives me over limit warnings which used to cause it stop syncing too.
Did this post help you? If so, give it a Like below to let us know.
Need help with something else? Ask me a question!
Find Tips & Tricks Discover more ways to use Dropbox here!
Interested in Community Groups? Click here to join
Got all hung up and froze me out of Chrome, no downloading email attachments, Preview didn't work, some files I couldn't open, icons next to files on the desktop with the DB cloud symbol, etc. and gobbled up resources.
Reading that material always left me with a feeling of gloom, and one day that sense of darkness inspired me to write a partial response to all such antagonistic claims. I would like to share with you some of the thoughts I recorded that day, and although what I wrote was for my benefit, I hope it will help you as well.
shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.1
When the Lord described the signs of His coming and the end of the world, when He described our day, He mentioned many things, including wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, and many other signs, including this one:
For in those days [this day] there shall also arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch, that, if possible, they shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant.2
There are many who deceive, and the spectrum of deception is broad. At one end we meet those who attack the Restoration, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. Next we see those who believe in the Restoration but claim the Church is deficient and has gone astray. There are others who also claim to believe in the Restoration but are disillusioned with doctrine that conflicts with the shifting attitudes of our day. There are some who, without authority, lay claim to visions, dreams, and visitations to right the ship, guide us to a higher path, or prepare the Church for the end of the world. Others are deceived by false spirits.
At the far end of the spectrum we come to an entire universe of distractions. Never has there been more information, misinformation, and disinformation; more goods, gadgets, and games; and more options, places to go, and things to see and do to occupy time and attention away from what is most important. And all of that and much more is disseminated instantaneously throughout the world by electronic media. This is a day of deception.
When you act badly, you may think you are bad, when in truth you are usually mistaken. You are just wrong. The challenge is not so much closing the gap between our actions and our beliefs; rather, the challenge is closing the gap between our beliefs and the truth. That is the challenge.
Begin by answering the primary questions. There are primary questions and there are secondary questions. Answer the primary questions first. Not all questions are equal and not all truths are equal. The primary questions are the most important. Everything else is subordinate. There are only a few primary questions. I will mention four of them.
By contrast, the secondary questions are unending. They include questions about Church history, polygamy, people of African descent and the priesthood, women and the priesthood, how the Book of Mormon was translated, the Pearl of Great Price, DNA and the Book of Mormon, gay marriage, the different accounts of the First Vision, and on and on.
How can we know the answers? There are different methods of learning, including the scientific, analytical, academic, and divine methods. The divine method of learning incorporates elements of the other three but ultimately trumps everything else by tapping into the powers of heaven. All four methods are necessary to know the truth. They all begin the same way: with a question. Questions are important, especially the primary questions.
c80f0f1006