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Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

394 points by ronjouch 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
brian_herman 8y ago
Wow, I'm glad I deleted my dropbox account a while ago and now use gasp hard drives and usb sticks and github to put up all my opensource code and bitbucket for closed source stuff.
kilian 8y ago
Seeing how an encrypted home directory is as good as the default option in Ubuntu, and seeing as it already works now, this seems like a dumb move. This is a shame because I just started using Dropbox significantly more to back up shared photos. Time to search for something else, I guess.
- deleted 8y ago
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- nebulous1 8y ago
  Not in the latest Ubuntu installs. They do FDE instead of home folder encryption.
  - rcarmo 8y ago
    The option to encrypt your home folder is still there in Ubuntu 18.04 (which I set up only yesterday), and appears after you set up volumes upon initial user creation. It is (funnily enough) even possible to enable _both_ kinds of encryption simultaneously. I'd say that they don't use full-disk encryption _instead_ of home folder. They just prompt for it sooner (and it is not the same thing if you have a modestly old machine, or a machine you share with other users).
    - sp332 8y ago
      I just spun up an 18.04.1 install in a VM to check, and I don't see an option to encrypt the user's homedir during installation. Edit: It's listed under "Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS" https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes
      - zaarn 8y ago
        IIRC it does show if you use the advanced installer option (ie where you go manually through all steps). Atleast the ubuntu server does that, though I wouldn't enable that either way since it's a pain to deal with from the outside.
    - nebulous1 8y ago
      You can manually encrypt your home folder after install, and perhaps they re-enabled the option to do it automatically in 18.04.1 but I haven't read that. It was definitely not there in 18.04.
  - SEJeff 8y ago
    Because LUKS > encryptfs, even though Dustin Kirkland has done absolutely fantastic work on encryptfs.
raverbashing 8y ago
> we’re ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems. The supported file systems... and Ext4 for Linux. Yeah this is not how it works. This is not how any of this works
- gnufied 8y ago
  That statement is bit dubious. The next line also says: > A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. Certainly XFS supports xattr and hence ideally should be supported. I don't know why they singled out ext4. I am running Dropbox on ext4 LUKS encrypted partition and I haven't seen the warning yet.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    extN xattrs are fairly limited, because iirc all xattrs of a given inode must be stored in the same block. I don't think XFS has any serious limitations (count/size) for them, but the Linux kernel itself limits the size to 64K.
    - ape4 8y ago
      You are correct. "man 5 attr" says: In the current ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystem implementations, the total bytes used by the names and values of all of a file's extended attributes must fit in a single filesystem block (1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes, depending on the block size specified when the filesystem was created).
      - user5994461 8y ago
        I would assume the block size is at least 4k for anything created in this era.
  - XorNot 8y ago
londons_explore 8y ago
Their reasoning of "you need a filesystem which supports extended attributes" sounds legit. Time for some of us to start work on adding extended attributes to more filesystems?
- jolmg 8y ago
  I believe all 3 filesystems have support for extended attributes, so it doesn't seem legit.
- majewsky 8y ago
  XFS is well-known for its extremely good xattrs support, so that does not add up. Source: Using XFS at work for OpenStack Swift, which makes extensive use of xattrs and thus prefers to run on XFS.
wslh 8y ago
Is this a new business opportunity?
- geoah 8y ago
  Probably not as such users are just a vocal minority, and probably not enough to use as a consumer group.
  - ofj28 8y ago
    Doesn’t mean the niche user base isn’t big enough to support a small scale operation Think nerd friendly and minimal, like NearlyFreeSpeech is to domain registrars
    - rplnt 8y ago
      Good example of a small scale niche service that seems to do well (I think): https://www.tarsnap.com/ https://www.tarsnap.com/
    - viraptor 8y ago
      Those little already have syncthing for sync and borg/duplicity systems for backup. (With a backend of choice) Why would they use a service that locks then in to one provider?
      - ofj28 8y ago
        Same reason they use Dropbox: they don’t want to manage all that
  - jonknee 8y ago
    And they really hate paying for stuff. Doubly so for things they think are simple and can be done "by myself".
    - megous 8y ago
      And you wonder why if this is what they get when they pay.
shittyadmin 8y ago
It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - probably doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't set correctly when used through ecryptfs. If instead you used dmcrypt and encrypted the whole device or partition you'd probably have no issue as it looks just like any other EXT4 FS to the system. Would be a lot better if they specified what features they need the underlying FS to support.
- fuzzy2 8y ago
  The (supposed) Dropbox engineer refers to Extended Attributes. Maybe they’re doing uncommon stuff with ’em that uncommon filesystems cannot cope with... ;)
- ronjouch 8y ago
  > "It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - probably doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't set correctly when used through ecryptfs." Thanks, I updated the title.
- rcarmo 8y ago
  Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it. That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.
  - jorvi 8y ago
    If you feel comfortable with Google, Gdrive has a great client in the form of OverGrive.
    - dawnerd 8y ago
      And there’s always rclone. Combine that with whatever encryption you want and you’re set.
WorkLifeBalance 8y ago
No problem, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- montecarl 8y ago
  Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker news post about Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
  - antoineMoPa 8y ago
    Are you telling me that I could build a startup with 3 lines of bash? (EDIT: and a fancy easy windows version)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Zak 8y ago
      A great many successful tech companies can be described in terms of more consumer-friendly Unix tools. Slack has the better part of a billion dollars in funding for what's essentially resource-hungry IRC with pictures. Dropbox does little you couldn't accomplish with a server and rsync. What I'm really eager to see is git for everyone else.
      - exikyut 8y ago
        What would "everyone else" do with Git? It's a Rube Goldberg solution implementing a highly specific set of ways to do file versioning. Most cloud storage providers offer rudimentary versioning; are you referring to the idea of promoting commits to being first-class? It would need to be baked into Word, Excel and similar, and those tools already have builtin version tracking, as horrible(?) as it is, so... :/
thomasfedb 8y ago
The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" - of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare. That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    According to shittyadmin, it's not even encryption it's encryption with ecryptfs.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    No stacked encryption on top of ext4. LUKS+ext4 should still work (since it's visible to Dropbox as just ext4 with cryptsetup/LUKS handling the underling container).
  - JoshMnem 8y ago
    > Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption. It's a terrible idea to not turn on hard drive encryption. Anyone who gets their hands on the machine can read and write to the drive by booting it with a thumb drive.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  Maybe they mean uncommon amongst their userbase.
- xigma 8y ago
  Honest question, what do you believe is "the most popular distro"? Professionally, I have never seen a BTRFS deployment, nor any of the distros commonly at the top of Distrowatch (Manjaro, Mint, Elementary...). With the fragmentation of Linux, even the "most popular" distro may hold a tiny market share. The guys at dropbox probably know far more about their users than what is reflected in some arbitrary popularity contest, so I doubt it's either ignorance or stupidity that led them to this decision.
mopsled 8y ago
Here is a direct link to the response from Dropbox: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr...
- dang 8y ago
  Thanks, we've changed to that from https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290122 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr....
WallWextra 8y ago
It's a shame that btrfs seems to be dead in the water. I guess nobody with the resources to build such a filesystem actually needs its snapshotting and integrity features at the filesystem level?
- Covzire 8y ago
  Does ZFS gaining steam on Linux in recent years have anything to do with the state of btrfs?
  - JosephEJones 8y ago
    Does it really gain steam? Last time I checked the CDDL license incompatibility with GPL made it impossible to ship ZFS with Linux, and as such, distros have separate packages not maintained by the core team (I'm thinking of Arch right now). For the record I would be very glad if I could seamlessy use ZFS, but from my perspective it looks like a lot of work that can break in unexpected places.
    - danieldk 8y ago
      NixOS has ZFS. I don't have long-term experience (switched to NixOS only two months ago or so), but the installation is pretty simple: (1) boot he installer CD, (2) add a line to your configuration to enable ZFS support, (3) switch to the new configuration. And then you are ready to install on ZFS root. Encrypted root also works. I used these instructions: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ZFS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ZFS Ironically, I felt less of a need to use ZFS on NixOS. I don't have a large pool and snapshotting the system is not really necessary, since in NixOS you can always roll back to a non-GCed previous version on your system. But I use filesystem compression and might use snapshots on /home.
      - JosephEJones 8y ago
        ZFS is also fully supported in Ubuntu 16: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/ZFS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/ZFS
jolmg 8y ago
So, what's the reason? I can't see it on the linked page. I would have thought that dropbox functionality is totally filesystem independent. I can't think of a reason why they'd do this. EDIT: Found it.
ronjouch 8y ago
TL;DR: Dropbox tells with a very unhelpful popup: "Move Dropbox location - Dropbox will stop syncing in November". And on the forums, dropboxer Jay precises that starting Nov. 7, 2018, they're limiting support to Windows / NTFS, macOS / HFS+ & APFS, linux/Ext4. They say missing X-attrs support is what guides dropping other fs. They didn't answer yet if displaying this message to users of common-through-Ubuntu Ext4+ecryptfs is intentional.
- megous 8y ago
  Missing xattrs? What?
  - ronjouch 8y ago
    See original message from Dropbox support: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr...
seanieb 8y ago
This sounds fine to me. Ya'll are making sound like they're refuseing to sync because the FS is encryped. The file systems mentioned are really old. You can use newer FS's that are encrypted. They need to support extended attributes for obvious reasons.
- detaro 8y ago
  btrfs is "really old" compared to ext4? Default setups of major distros are not worth supporting?
- Spivak 8y ago
  ext4: October 2008 btrfs: March 2009 ecryptfs: May 2016 xfs: 2002 Which one of these are old?
  - jeltz 8y ago
    XFS is from 1994, ported to Linux in 2002, so it is contemporary with NTFS which is from 1993.
- Twirrim 8y ago
  Age has nothing to do with it. If you keep dismissing tech due to age, you're going to be spending your life re-inventing the wheel and rediscovering the same problems and mistakes over and over again. By the way, NTFS dates back to 1993. It not included in the expiry list. Every file system mentioned as losing support is newer than that, and they're all under active development and getting better all the time. XFS became the default file system in Redhat 7 and derivatives. ecryptfs is the default for home directories on Ubuntu. They're talking about wiping out a significant proportion of Linux users here.
mixedCase 8y ago
For people looking to move to a service that supports Linux as a first class citizen: Mega works well enough as far as syncing files goes.
- otterpro 8y ago
  I had used Mega since it was introduced, and I had recommended it before with its generous 50GB free space and Linux support. However, Mega had become unreliable about a year ago, when it started to delete files after bad syncs. Be very careful about putting important files. Also sometimes, upload speed is very slow (took me over a minute to upload 120k file) and the sync on the iOS became really bad - it always get stuck on "Downloading...", but fails to sync. I hope they fix the problems, but until then, I've decided not to use it.
Quppa 8y ago
This appears to include ReFS on Windows (although with the creation of ReFS volumes being limited to enterprise-targeting editions of Windows 10, perhaps this won't affect too many people).
- fuzzy2 8y ago
  No, it doesn’t. Only NTFS is supported: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements#desktop https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
epberry 8y ago
I basically only use Dropbox because it is supported on Linux. Also its syncing technology is sooo much better than Google Drive you would think Drive was built by interns. However, they are taking their sweet time with newer features like Smart Sync. It's disappointing because I'm paying for these features and yet they're not supported on one of the platforms my whole company uses. All in all I really hope Dropbox doesn't keep chipping away at Linux - I fought hard internally to use it and I don't want to be proven wrong.
- thomasfedb 8y ago
  There's a decent open source sync daemon for OneDrive on Linux - I'm the packager who looks after it on Fedora. With the odd exception when APIs change it just works.
  - copperx 8y ago
    OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos.
    - thomasfedb 8y ago
      Personally I sync my git repos with git, everything else with OneDrive - that said dotfile support could be added to the client at least in theory…
    - fencepost 8y ago
      OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos. This does not appear to still be the case based on testing just now (creating a folder named ".foldername", containing a file named ".testfile" then verifying that they've synced up to OneDrive). Several years ago it didn't support syncing folders with a . in the name, but that was resolved 3 years ago. With Microsoft's relatively new focus on Git, I can't imagine that problems with repositories stored in OneDrive folders would remain unfixed. I will note that there are names that Windows Explorer won't let you create - notably, names beginning with a ".". That's an Explorer issue, not a OneDrive or filesystem issue - you can create such files and folders programmatically or from a command prompt.
kbumsik 8y ago
I'm fine with this cuz I'm using ext4, but why? As people in the thread say Dropbox have been supporting those filesystems without any problems for ten years.
sk_hazratali 8y ago
Thanks for the info. https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/01/ya-nabi-salam-alaika-salam.html https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/01/ya-nabi-salam-al...
vxNsr 8y ago
Dropbox isn't even the cheapest or best file syncing service, they're basically all a commodity at this point and if they don't want you as customers... just go elsewhere.
- mxuribe 8y ago
  Would you kindly provide recommendations? I'm looking for a sync service which can run on windows AND linux (which is why onedrive and google drive are out)...and i'm willing to pay a fair monthly fee.
  - swiley 8y ago
    Just use syncthing. It works better, is open source, and runs on everything.
    - acdha 8y ago
      Doesn't that require you to play sysadmin running your own servers?
      - xj9 8y ago
        syncthing is p2p, you just run it on the devices that you want to sync with
      - snerbles 8y ago
        No. There's already a peer-to-peer relay infrastructure in place for when your devices can't make direct connections to each other.
        acdha 8y ago
        That sounds like the answer is actually yes because you have to run the various computers, provision enough storage to hold everything, secure them, and make sure you have a backup plan.
koolba 8y ago
Excluding XFS is an odd choice as it's very common in the server world. I'm assuming encryptfs-ext4 has some attribute issue that prevents them for doing efficient deltas. That aside, what's the use case for encryptfs at all? Isn't it strictly worse than LUKS on the underlying volume or a volume file mounted via loopback?
- gnufied 8y ago
  I would hold my horses on xfs being unsupported claim. They explicitly said any modern file system with xattr is supported. XFS does fit that description. OP has drawn his own conclusions from the Dropbox reply.
  - Vash63 8y ago
    My /home is XFS on my Arch system and I received the same popup from the Dropbox client. I can confirm that this does apply to XFS as well.
    - spacenick88 8y ago
      Same for Btrfs
  - rcthompson 8y ago
    They did not explicitly say they support "any modern filesystem with xattr". They said that they support EXT4 and nothing else on Linux.
  - altendo 8y ago
    The HN link is pg 2 of the forum thread; on page 1 a Dropbox employee states the following: >The supported file systems are NTFS for Windows, HFS+ or APFS for Mac, and Ext4 for Linux. >A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. (emphasis mine)[1] XFS may support xattrs but that doesn't mean that Dropbox officially supports it. They are pretty clear on ext4 being the only supported filesystem. [1]https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr... Edit: added link to the proper comment in the Dropbox thread
willtim 8y ago
This makes no sense. For example, XFS is a very robust and actively developed filesystem and is now the default on many distros. It also supports xattr.
moogly 8y ago
Joke's on them because I already dropped Dropbox many moons ago due to poor performance and high price compared to the competition. Not to mention that they hadn't released a new feature in half a decade. I'm not sure they still have. Also, I'm pretty sure Btrfs supports xattrs unless I'm missing something.
izacus 8y ago
Is there any good alternative that has Linux support and isn't Google Drive? And supports shared folders?
- bevax 8y ago
  Nextcloud
- Avamander 8y ago
  Seafile.
jhack 8y ago
Would this impact FUSE-based filesystems like EncFS?
- binomialxenon 8y ago
  Definitely EncFS (which Ubuntu used to use for /home encryption), most probably anything besides ext4.
dmoreno 8y ago
Another alternative is nextcloud... It also has a sync desktop client and works great in my company for sharing folders with colleagues or keep business documents in sync on desktop and laptop. There are even third parties that install it and manage it for you. [1] https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/
scott_s 8y ago
This should probably link directly to the message from the community moderator: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr... Right now it just links to the second page of the discussion; the community moderator's message is on the first page.
tzs 8y ago
Could people whose filesystem will no longer be supported work around this by making an ext4 filesystem in a file and mounting that file via the loop device, and moving their Dropbox directory to that?
- cmurf 8y ago
  Yes, but it's kinda ugly for regular Joe user. You'll have to know how to manage it: fragmentation, setting initial size and resizing, trimming, how to automate activating and mounting it. Etc.
dec0dedab0de 8y ago
I wonder if I'll get a prorated refund for the time I pre-paid. This is really silly of them, the entire reason to use dropbox is because they have a client for everything.
SEJeff 8y ago
That's cool dropbox, us Linux users prefer services like tarsnap anyways: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ Colin is the founder, and also a HN celebrity because of this comment (which he regrets, but never gets old): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
- dagw 8y ago
  As much as I like tarsnap, comparing it Dropbox makes no sense at all. They do completely different things.
dahdum 8y ago
Ecryptfa is the default for new Ubuntu installs, isn’t it? They might have well just come out and say they were dropping Linux support going forward instead of dance around it. Their focus seems to be on cost cutting and better value extraction than growth and features these days.
anderspitman 8y ago
For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will eventually, though. It's a fairly new feature if I'm not mistaken. For now, if I really just need to get a file from point A to point B right now, I used File Pizza.
- ahnick 8y ago
  I'd definitely throw Keybase in there as well. To me it has the easiest experience being cross platform, integrated with the filesystem, end-to-end encrypted, and having solved the identity proof piece.
  - eropple 8y ago
    Keybase is nice, but it isn't a Dropbox replacement. Your files aren't accessible offline; that's kind of a core part of a file sync instead of a file store.
    - ahnick 8y ago
      I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Also, when you consider that being offline for an extended period of time means that your files are not being synced, then the purpose of Dropbox is somewhat defeated. Basically Dropbox can't sync without connectivity and if you have connectivity then you would have access to the Keybase "file store" anyway.
      - eropple 8y ago
        > I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Yeah, no, I don't think so. If my bus or train goes through a tunnel, losing my dotfiles or my OneNote notebooks or whatever else is pretty bad. Forget first world problems--"people almost always have connectivity" is some...like...zeroth world stuff.
mynegation 8y ago
As a developer I understand that each supported filesystem adds development workload and potential for bugs and at some point you need to weigh this cost against the benefit. The problem with this is that the people who use these filesystem are more likely to be opinion makers for other people in the choice of file syncing solution. Dropbox is big enough so they think they do not have to worry about it. But there is a real possibility that they will alienate just enough influential people, that this will erode their user base more than they realize.
unixhero 8y ago
Tragic
brightball 8y ago
I continue to wonder about Dropbox's support for Linux. It's been the primary reason that I use them so heavily and recommend them so often. If you look at the filename on the linux download is says 2015 in the filename. Has the linux client gone untouched for 3 years?
F00Fbug 8y ago
Syncthing will do the job. Yes, it doesn't implement a cloud store like Dropbox. You have a couple of alternatives: 1) get a cheap vps host (digitalocean, vultr, etc.) and make it part of your syncthing 'cluster'. 2) get a raspberry-pi running syncthing and a big external HD and put that somewhere else (parent's, brother's, office, etc.).
tanin 8y ago
Can anyone tldr the solution? I'm on Ubuntu and get the warning (stop syncing/move folder). Move to where? How do I get it to work on Ubuntu again?
patrickg_zill 8y ago
I keep wanting to use ZFS's incremental syncing across SSH - guess this is now a great excuse to set it all up on a Linux laptop!
rietta 8y ago
What's the reason for the move? I am on LUKs+EXT4 on my development workstation as full disk encryption on all devices is mandated by corporate policy and our contracts with clients.
kjullien 8y ago
I'll still be using my good ol' rsync, old as shit, so is sh, so is grep, so is vi, so is everything that your system is probably based on, and yet it simply works ! How convenient.
messe 8y ago
Seems ludicrous when XFS is the default file system for RHEL.
- awill 8y ago
  Yep. Dropbox is going to lose some customers. Maybe it won't be too many (compared to Windows/Mac), but the customers they will lose will be their most technical.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    How many customers do you think are running RHEL as a desktop workstation and allowed to use Dropbox?
    - user5994461 8y ago
      If any, I bet they can be counted on one hand.
codemusings 8y ago
Self-hosted Nextcloud instance + AWS for storage puts you somewhere around $10 to $20 per month depending on how much space you need. Just throwing it out there. The sync client has worked flawelessly for me so far. Plus you get CalDAV/CardDAV right out of the box.
hiccuphippo 8y ago
Why do they need to directly support the underlying filesystem? Can't they have support for the high level fs api? Sure not as performant but at least will work.
- xxpor 8y ago
  read the post. they need xattrs support from the file system. now, why btrfs wouldn't work is beyond me.
xg15 8y ago
This seems like the equivalent of user-agent sniffing. So even though the problem is a feature (xattrs), they will try to detect whether or not the filesystem is ext4 and stop syncing otherwise? Is that correct? So, if other programs follow suit, will we start seeing options to lie about the filesystem type?
shmerl 8y ago
XFS and BTRFS are uncommon? Filesystem should be transparent to such things.
x0054 8y ago
I have been using Resilio Sync on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and it works a charm for me. In case this turns out to be a problem for you, maybe give them a try. Never an issue on Linux with Resilio Sync. I run a copy on my VPS in the cloud for remote storage.
- andai 8y ago
  I'm about to cancel my Dropbox subscription and move to Resilio, so I wanted to chime in and say I've had a great experience with Resilio in the past and my friends are also using it with great results. Btw: Resilio Sync used to be known as BitTorrent Sync.
whitexn--g28h 8y ago
Aside from the performance hit, can’t users of other file systems just add a loop back device and mount that for Dropbox?
ape4 8y ago
Its too bad there isn't a standard for Dropbox-like functionally yet. An RFC that everyone can write to.
- toyg 8y ago
  Technically there is WebDAV. Yeah I know, but it's there and it's a spec. Another de-facto spec is rsync, iirc tarsnap was basically built on that. At some point there might have been even a business or two that offered rsync access.
  - ape4 8y ago
    Commercial rsync... https://rsync.net/ https://rsync.net/
  - cperciva 8y ago
    You might be thinking of Duplicity -- it's based on rsync. Tarsnap works in a very different way.
erickj 8y ago
Well I for one will be taking the $0 per month that I spend on their free tier elsewhere
mongol 8y ago
Maybe I can figure out a way to automount a file formatted as ext4 in my home directory using systemd mount units.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  And then you'll have two problems...
jchw 8y ago
I gave up on Dropbox. Linux was always a second class citizen, and it only ever seems to get worse. If you are going to pay for something, Insync and Google Drive make a decent Dropbox alternative. I'll be honest, though, I simply stopped using syncing solutions like these, so I really don't know if there are now better options across platforms.
Walkman 8y ago
This is exactly why I stopped using Dropbox and moved everything I have to my own https://nextcloud.com https://nextcloud.com instance. It's very easy to install and upgrade, it is stable, have way more features than Dropbox and you have total control over your own data. Overall a superior experience. If they would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be done with it or just copy the files out of the /data/Nextcloud folder and move to another one open solution.
- redm 8y ago
  "If they would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be done with it." -- That sounds like a good strategy but in my experience, it never works because your technology environment is not a vacuum (I assume). At some point you'll need an upgrade for security, compatibility, etc.
  - Walkman 8y ago
    It can run in a container, a virtual machine, hosted on a cloud instance or whatever. Nowadays, you have infinite choices for isolation. One of my colleague runs it in a DigitalOcean droplet and nothing else.
    - fanzhang 8y ago
      If you want to run your file sync client in a container, I think that limitation alone removes a huge amount of value from a low-friction file sync tool.
      - Walkman 8y ago
        Why would you run the client in a container? I was talking about the server.
        Operyl 8y ago
        Because the client can be just as vulnerable to security issues as the server is.
cmurf 8y ago
I wonder if the xattr issue has anything to do with there being adequate abstraction of underlying file systems by the VFS? Btrfs, ext4, and XFS all support xattr, but I don't know if they all support xattr the same way via a single interface? And then how does that compare on macOS where there's JHFS+/HFSX and APFS?
8077628 8y ago
This is a tragic decision on Dropbox's part. The service's popularity is a product of it being stable and running everywhere. If they start pulling back compatibility, where does it end? Even if this change only impacts a small percentage of users, it threatens everyone that their compatibility may be revoked. Dropbox is violating their philosophy as a universal solution and squandering their key selling point for some small cost savings. What a horrible decision.
oneplane 8y ago
Well, that's just stupid. Why not check for extended attributes, and if they aren't there, call it unsupported.
Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
Ugh, I use Dropbox on several platforms, some NTFS, some APFS, some HFS and exFAT. The majority of my files are synced to exFAT because it's the only bloody filesystem that's officially supported across all major OS. No it doesn't support extended attributes and I don't care, 95% of my files are photos! If Dropbox go ahead with this I'm bailing. The only reason I use a managed service like this is so I don't have to care about the technical details (filesystems etc.)
nebulous1 8y ago
It appears this might be related to dropbox (mis)using statfs's f_fsid field as part of its authentication system. The dropbox devs apparently assumed that this field was stable, but on XFS (for instance) it can change. dropboxforum thread here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app/Dropbox-on-OpenSUSE-Leap-15-Linux-unlinks-after-restart/td-p/278624/page/3 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app...
- cbhl 8y ago
  Oof, although not surprising. Once saw a system that used inode numbers as "unique identifiers for files on local disk" and it turns out that on Linux / ext filesystems, they're not unique (they get reused if you delete a file and then create a new one). That team just decided to not support Linux at all.
- gkoberger 8y ago
  Sometimes it's not about assuming something is stable, but rather finding a workaround you need and hoping it lasts.
- chadaustin 8y ago
  That sounds to me like the most likely hypothesis in this thread. I mean, the Linux manpage itself says it's stable and can be used, with the inode number, to uniquely identify a file. http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html I'm not surprised, though. Fancy copy-on-write filesystems like btrfs have some other subtle gotchas. If you allocate (like, really, not as a hole) a big file on btrfs and mmap it for write, you might see a SIGBUS upon writing because btrfs needed to recompress a block and the new compressed block didn't fit where the old one did. I've gained a new appreciation for the predictability and simplicity of ext4.
phyzome 8y ago
I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently "uncommon". Fascinating perspective. EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the supported ones. Thanks for the headsmack. :-)
- CommieBobDole 8y ago
  NTFS, HFS+, APFS and Ext4 are the supported file systems, not the ones being dropped. Btrfs is being dropped.
- sydd 8y ago
  I think you misread. NTFS is one of the supported OSes
bayindirh 8y ago
Why not run a small set of tests after installing and see whether the required set of FS features available? Experienced users run plethora of filesystems which support the needs of dropbox. IMHO, this is a lazy solution to a relatively simple problem.
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  Most likely Dropbox needs to set these limits so that they can allocate their quality assurance department to very thoroughly test what they claim they support. I'm an architect for a Dropbox competitor. Sometimes we need to draw a line in the sand for what we support, and what we don't support. This is mostly due to balancing cost / benefit. A customer may do something strange that we don't support, and we have to weigh how many engineering resources it will take to support the customer. This can apply to unusual filesystems that we don't actively test our product with. IMO, Dropbox did the right thing. It's only real technical users who get into different kinds of filesystems; and these are the same kind of users who can understand, "Dropbox only works on X, Y, and Z."
  - bayindirh 8y ago
    From a QA point you're actually right. I don't think Dropbox needs to support all filesystems, but as a programmer and and advocate of better user experience, I'd like to see a system which behaves a little differently: a- FS is something we support, great! Go on... b- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they pass warn the user: "Hey! We don't support this, but it looks like working. If it fails we can not support you. Are you sure? (Y/N)" c- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they fail tell the user: "Hey! We can not work on this FS, sorry.". The good thing is you implement the tests once. Since, POSIX standard is a standard, so run the tests over that interface. You practically don't need to maintain anything about the tests. Maybe run a couple of unit tests over a simulated environment, that's all.
jplayer01 8y ago
Well, so long Dropbox.
j_h 8y ago
Not really contributing anything useful. Just have to agree that this is a terrible move. Now I have to find another cloud solution for all of my linux computers.
fit2rule 8y ago
It is time for Dropbox to die. Seriously. Dropbox is but a new Linux kernel module away from being completely and utterly irrelevant. $ insmod ifps

394 points by ronjouch 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Wow, I'm glad I deleted my dropbox account a while ago and now use gasp hard drives and usb sticks and github to put up all my opensource code and bitbucket for closed source stuff.

kilian 8y ago

Seeing how an encrypted home directory is as good as the default option in Ubuntu, and seeing as it already works now, this seems like a dumb move. This is a shame because I just started using Dropbox significantly more to back up shared photos. Time to search for something else, I guess.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nebulous1 8y ago
Not in the latest Ubuntu installs. They do FDE instead of home folder encryption.
- rcarmo 8y ago
  The option to encrypt your home folder is still there in Ubuntu 18.04 (which I set up only yesterday), and appears after you set up volumes upon initial user creation. It is (funnily enough) even possible to enable _both_ kinds of encryption simultaneously. I'd say that they don't use full-disk encryption _instead_ of home folder. They just prompt for it sooner (and it is not the same thing if you have a modestly old machine, or a machine you share with other users).
  - sp332 8y ago
    I just spun up an 18.04.1 install in a VM to check, and I don't see an option to encrypt the user's homedir during installation. Edit: It's listed under "Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS" https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes
    - zaarn 8y ago
      IIRC it does show if you use the advanced installer option (ie where you go manually through all steps). Atleast the ubuntu server does that, though I wouldn't enable that either way since it's a pain to deal with from the outside.
  - nebulous1 8y ago
    You can manually encrypt your home folder after install, and perhaps they re-enabled the option to do it automatically in 18.04.1 but I haven't read that. It was definitely not there in 18.04.
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Because LUKS > encryptfs, even though Dustin Kirkland has done absolutely fantastic work on encryptfs.

raverbashing 8y ago

> we’re ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems. The supported file systems... and Ext4 for Linux. Yeah this is not how it works. This is not how any of this works

gnufied 8y ago
That statement is bit dubious. The next line also says: > A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. Certainly XFS supports xattr and hence ideally should be supported. I don't know why they singled out ext4. I am running Dropbox on ext4 LUKS encrypted partition and I haven't seen the warning yet.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  extN xattrs are fairly limited, because iirc all xattrs of a given inode must be stored in the same block. I don't think XFS has any serious limitations (count/size) for them, but the Linux kernel itself limits the size to 64K.
  - ape4 8y ago
    You are correct. "man 5 attr" says: In the current ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystem implementations, the total bytes used by the names and values of all of a file's extended attributes must fit in a single filesystem block (1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes, depending on the block size specified when the filesystem was created).
    - user5994461 8y ago
      I would assume the block size is at least 4k for anything created in this era.
- XorNot 8y ago

londons_explore 8y ago

Their reasoning of "you need a filesystem which supports extended attributes" sounds legit. Time for some of us to start work on adding extended attributes to more filesystems?

jolmg 8y ago
I believe all 3 filesystems have support for extended attributes, so it doesn't seem legit.
majewsky 8y ago
XFS is well-known for its extremely good xattrs support, so that does not add up. Source: Using XFS at work for OpenStack Swift, which makes extensive use of xattrs and thus prefers to run on XFS.

wslh 8y ago

Is this a new business opportunity?

geoah 8y ago
Probably not as such users are just a vocal minority, and probably not enough to use as a consumer group.
- ofj28 8y ago
  Doesn’t mean the niche user base isn’t big enough to support a small scale operation Think nerd friendly and minimal, like NearlyFreeSpeech is to domain registrars
  - rplnt 8y ago
    Good example of a small scale niche service that seems to do well (I think): https://www.tarsnap.com/ https://www.tarsnap.com/
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Those little already have syncthing for sync and borg/duplicity systems for backup. (With a backend of choice) Why would they use a service that locks then in to one provider?
    - ofj28 8y ago
      Same reason they use Dropbox: they don’t want to manage all that
- jonknee 8y ago
  And they really hate paying for stuff. Doubly so for things they think are simple and can be done "by myself".
  - megous 8y ago
    And you wonder why if this is what they get when they pay.

shittyadmin 8y ago

It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - probably doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't set correctly when used through ecryptfs. If instead you used dmcrypt and encrypted the whole device or partition you'd probably have no issue as it looks just like any other EXT4 FS to the system. Would be a lot better if they specified what features they need the underlying FS to support.

fuzzy2 8y ago
The (supposed) Dropbox engineer refers to Extended Attributes. Maybe they’re doing uncommon stuff with ’em that uncommon filesystems cannot cope with... ;)
ronjouch 8y ago
> "It's not encrypted ext4, it's ecryptfs (which acts as a separate layer entirely, creating a virtual encrypted filesystem on top of ext4) - probably doesn't support some inotify feature or some extended attributes that aren't set correctly when used through ecryptfs." Thanks, I updated the title.
rcarmo 8y ago
Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it. That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.
- jorvi 8y ago
  If you feel comfortable with Google, Gdrive has a great client in the form of OverGrive.
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    And there’s always rclone. Combine that with whatever encryption you want and you’re set.

WorkLifeBalance 8y ago

No problem, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
montecarl 8y ago
Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker news post about Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- antoineMoPa 8y ago
  Are you telling me that I could build a startup with 3 lines of bash? (EDIT: and a fancy easy windows version)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zak 8y ago
    A great many successful tech companies can be described in terms of more consumer-friendly Unix tools. Slack has the better part of a billion dollars in funding for what's essentially resource-hungry IRC with pictures. Dropbox does little you couldn't accomplish with a server and rsync. What I'm really eager to see is git for everyone else.
    - exikyut 8y ago
      What would "everyone else" do with Git? It's a Rube Goldberg solution implementing a highly specific set of ways to do file versioning. Most cloud storage providers offer rudimentary versioning; are you referring to the idea of promoting commits to being first-class? It would need to be baked into Word, Excel and similar, and those tools already have builtin version tracking, as horrible(?) as it is, so... :/

thomasfedb 8y ago

The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" - of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?

wlesieutre 8y ago
I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare. That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.
- masklinn 8y ago
  According to shittyadmin, it's not even encryption it's encryption with ecryptfs.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 8y ago
  No stacked encryption on top of ext4. LUKS+ext4 should still work (since it's visible to Dropbox as just ext4 with cryptsetup/LUKS handling the underling container).
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  > Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption. It's a terrible idea to not turn on hard drive encryption. Anyone who gets their hands on the machine can read and write to the drive by booting it with a thumb drive.
jimmy1 8y ago
Maybe they mean uncommon amongst their userbase.
xigma 8y ago
Honest question, what do you believe is "the most popular distro"? Professionally, I have never seen a BTRFS deployment, nor any of the distros commonly at the top of Distrowatch (Manjaro, Mint, Elementary...). With the fragmentation of Linux, even the "most popular" distro may hold a tiny market share. The guys at dropbox probably know far more about their users than what is reflected in some arbitrary popularity contest, so I doubt it's either ignorance or stupidity that led them to this decision.

mopsled 8y ago

Here is a direct link to the response from Dropbox: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr...

dang 8y ago
Thanks, we've changed to that from https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290122 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr....

WallWextra 8y ago

It's a shame that btrfs seems to be dead in the water. I guess nobody with the resources to build such a filesystem actually needs its snapshotting and integrity features at the filesystem level?

Covzire 8y ago
Does ZFS gaining steam on Linux in recent years have anything to do with the state of btrfs?
- JosephEJones 8y ago
  Does it really gain steam? Last time I checked the CDDL license incompatibility with GPL made it impossible to ship ZFS with Linux, and as such, distros have separate packages not maintained by the core team (I'm thinking of Arch right now). For the record I would be very glad if I could seamlessy use ZFS, but from my perspective it looks like a lot of work that can break in unexpected places.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    NixOS has ZFS. I don't have long-term experience (switched to NixOS only two months ago or so), but the installation is pretty simple: (1) boot he installer CD, (2) add a line to your configuration to enable ZFS support, (3) switch to the new configuration. And then you are ready to install on ZFS root. Encrypted root also works. I used these instructions: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ZFS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ZFS Ironically, I felt less of a need to use ZFS on NixOS. I don't have a large pool and snapshotting the system is not really necessary, since in NixOS you can always roll back to a non-GCed previous version on your system. But I use filesystem compression and might use snapshots on /home.
    - JosephEJones 8y ago
      ZFS is also fully supported in Ubuntu 16: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/ZFS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/ZFS

jolmg 8y ago

So, what's the reason? I can't see it on the linked page. I would have thought that dropbox functionality is totally filesystem independent. I can't think of a reason why they'd do this. EDIT: Found it.

ronjouch 8y ago

TL;DR: Dropbox tells with a very unhelpful popup: "Move Dropbox location - Dropbox will stop syncing in November". And on the forums, dropboxer Jay precises that starting Nov. 7, 2018, they're limiting support to Windows / NTFS, macOS / HFS+ & APFS, linux/Ext4. They say missing X-attrs support is what guides dropping other fs. They didn't answer yet if displaying this message to users of common-through-Ubuntu Ext4+ecryptfs is intentional.

megous 8y ago
Missing xattrs? What?
- ronjouch 8y ago
  See original message from Dropbox support: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr...

seanieb 8y ago

This sounds fine to me. Ya'll are making sound like they're refuseing to sync because the FS is encryped. The file systems mentioned are really old. You can use newer FS's that are encrypted. They need to support extended attributes for obvious reasons.

detaro 8y ago
btrfs is "really old" compared to ext4? Default setups of major distros are not worth supporting?
Spivak 8y ago
ext4: October 2008 btrfs: March 2009 ecryptfs: May 2016 xfs: 2002 Which one of these are old?
- jeltz 8y ago
  XFS is from 1994, ported to Linux in 2002, so it is contemporary with NTFS which is from 1993.
Twirrim 8y ago
Age has nothing to do with it. If you keep dismissing tech due to age, you're going to be spending your life re-inventing the wheel and rediscovering the same problems and mistakes over and over again. By the way, NTFS dates back to 1993. It not included in the expiry list. Every file system mentioned as losing support is newer than that, and they're all under active development and getting better all the time. XFS became the default file system in Redhat 7 and derivatives. ecryptfs is the default for home directories on Ubuntu. They're talking about wiping out a significant proportion of Linux users here.

mixedCase 8y ago

For people looking to move to a service that supports Linux as a first class citizen: Mega works well enough as far as syncing files goes.

otterpro 8y ago
I had used Mega since it was introduced, and I had recommended it before with its generous 50GB free space and Linux support. However, Mega had become unreliable about a year ago, when it started to delete files after bad syncs. Be very careful about putting important files. Also sometimes, upload speed is very slow (took me over a minute to upload 120k file) and the sync on the iOS became really bad - it always get stuck on "Downloading...", but fails to sync. I hope they fix the problems, but until then, I've decided not to use it.

Quppa 8y ago

This appears to include ReFS on Windows (although with the creation of ReFS volumes being limited to enterprise-targeting editions of Windows 10, perhaps this won't affect too many people).

fuzzy2 8y ago
No, it doesn’t. Only NTFS is supported: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements#desktop https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

epberry 8y ago

I basically only use Dropbox because it is supported on Linux. Also its syncing technology is sooo much better than Google Drive you would think Drive was built by interns. However, they are taking their sweet time with newer features like Smart Sync. It's disappointing because I'm paying for these features and yet they're not supported on one of the platforms my whole company uses. All in all I really hope Dropbox doesn't keep chipping away at Linux - I fought hard internally to use it and I don't want to be proven wrong.

thomasfedb 8y ago
There's a decent open source sync daemon for OneDrive on Linux - I'm the packager who looks after it on Fedora. With the odd exception when APIs change it just works.
- copperx 8y ago
  OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos.
  - thomasfedb 8y ago
    Personally I sync my git repos with git, everything else with OneDrive - that said dotfile support could be added to the client at least in theory…
  - fencepost 8y ago
    OneDrive doesn't support dotfiles and thus can't sync Git repos. This does not appear to still be the case based on testing just now (creating a folder named ".foldername", containing a file named ".testfile" then verifying that they've synced up to OneDrive). Several years ago it didn't support syncing folders with a . in the name, but that was resolved 3 years ago. With Microsoft's relatively new focus on Git, I can't imagine that problems with repositories stored in OneDrive folders would remain unfixed. I will note that there are names that Windows Explorer won't let you create - notably, names beginning with a ".". That's an Explorer issue, not a OneDrive or filesystem issue - you can create such files and folders programmatically or from a command prompt.

kbumsik 8y ago

I'm fine with this cuz I'm using ext4, but why? As people in the thread say Dropbox have been supporting those filesystems without any problems for ten years.

sk_hazratali 8y ago

Thanks for the info. https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/01/ya-nabi-salam-alaika-salam.html https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/01/ya-nabi-salam-al...

vxNsr 8y ago

Dropbox isn't even the cheapest or best file syncing service, they're basically all a commodity at this point and if they don't want you as customers... just go elsewhere.

mxuribe 8y ago
Would you kindly provide recommendations? I'm looking for a sync service which can run on windows AND linux (which is why onedrive and google drive are out)...and i'm willing to pay a fair monthly fee.
- swiley 8y ago
  Just use syncthing. It works better, is open source, and runs on everything.
  - acdha 8y ago
    Doesn't that require you to play sysadmin running your own servers?
    - xj9 8y ago
      syncthing is p2p, you just run it on the devices that you want to sync with
    - snerbles 8y ago
      No. There's already a peer-to-peer relay infrastructure in place for when your devices can't make direct connections to each other.
      - acdha 8y ago
        That sounds like the answer is actually yes because you have to run the various computers, provision enough storage to hold everything, secure them, and make sure you have a backup plan.

koolba 8y ago

Excluding XFS is an odd choice as it's very common in the server world. I'm assuming encryptfs-ext4 has some attribute issue that prevents them for doing efficient deltas. That aside, what's the use case for encryptfs at all? Isn't it strictly worse than LUKS on the underlying volume or a volume file mounted via loopback?

gnufied 8y ago
I would hold my horses on xfs being unsupported claim. They explicitly said any modern file system with xattr is supported. XFS does fit that description. OP has drawn his own conclusions from the Dropbox reply.
- Vash63 8y ago
  My /home is XFS on my Arch system and I received the same popup from the Dropbox client. I can confirm that this does apply to XFS as well.
  - spacenick88 8y ago
    Same for Btrfs
- rcthompson 8y ago
  They did not explicitly say they support "any modern filesystem with xattr". They said that they support EXT4 and nothing else on Linux.
- altendo 8y ago
  The HN link is pg 2 of the forum thread; on page 1 a Dropbox employee states the following: >The supported file systems are NTFS for Windows, HFS+ or APFS for Mac, and Ext4 for Linux. >A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. (emphasis mine)[1] XFS may support xattrs but that doesn't mean that Dropbox officially supports it. They are pretty clear on ext4 being the only supported filesystem. [1]https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr... Edit: added link to the proper comment in the Dropbox thread

willtim 8y ago

This makes no sense. For example, XFS is a very robust and actively developed filesystem and is now the default on many distros. It also supports xattr.

moogly 8y ago

Joke's on them because I already dropped Dropbox many moons ago due to poor performance and high price compared to the competition. Not to mention that they hadn't released a new feature in half a decade. I'm not sure they still have. Also, I'm pretty sure Btrfs supports xattrs unless I'm missing something.

izacus 8y ago

Is there any good alternative that has Linux support and isn't Google Drive? And supports shared folders?

bevax 8y ago
Nextcloud
Avamander 8y ago
Seafile.

jhack 8y ago

Would this impact FUSE-based filesystems like EncFS?

binomialxenon 8y ago
Definitely EncFS (which Ubuntu used to use for /home encryption), most probably anything besides ext4.

dmoreno 8y ago

Another alternative is nextcloud... It also has a sync desktop client and works great in my company for sharing folders with colleagues or keep business documents in sync on desktop and laptop. There are even third parties that install it and manage it for you. [1] https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/

scott_s 8y ago

This should probably link directly to the message from the community moderator: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dropbox-client-warn-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M42255 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Linux-Dr... Right now it just links to the second page of the discussion; the community moderator's message is on the first page.

tzs 8y ago

Could people whose filesystem will no longer be supported work around this by making an ext4 filesystem in a file and mounting that file via the loop device, and moving their Dropbox directory to that?

cmurf 8y ago
Yes, but it's kinda ugly for regular Joe user. You'll have to know how to manage it: fragmentation, setting initial size and resizing, trimming, how to automate activating and mounting it. Etc.

dec0dedab0de 8y ago

I wonder if I'll get a prorated refund for the time I pre-paid. This is really silly of them, the entire reason to use dropbox is because they have a client for everything.

SEJeff 8y ago

That's cool dropbox, us Linux users prefer services like tarsnap anyways: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ Colin is the founder, and also a HN celebrity because of this comment (which he regrets, but never gets old): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

dagw 8y ago
As much as I like tarsnap, comparing it Dropbox makes no sense at all. They do completely different things.

dahdum 8y ago

Ecryptfa is the default for new Ubuntu installs, isn’t it? They might have well just come out and say they were dropping Linux support going forward instead of dance around it. Their focus seems to be on cost cutting and better value extraction than growth and features these days.

anderspitman 8y ago

For those interested in open source alternatives, syncthing, NextCloud (fork of ownCloud), and Seafile are some of the big names in this space, as others have mentioned. Personally I'm on syncthing. It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. My only complaint is it's not really instantaneous for me. In theory it works with inotify, but I've never quite been able to get it to work. I'm confident it will eventually, though. It's a fairly new feature if I'm not mistaken. For now, if I really just need to get a file from point A to point B right now, I used File Pizza.

ahnick 8y ago
I'd definitely throw Keybase in there as well. To me it has the easiest experience being cross platform, integrated with the filesystem, end-to-end encrypted, and having solved the identity proof piece.
- eropple 8y ago
  Keybase is nice, but it isn't a Dropbox replacement. Your files aren't accessible offline; that's kind of a core part of a file sync instead of a file store.
  - ahnick 8y ago
    I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Also, when you consider that being offline for an extended period of time means that your files are not being synced, then the purpose of Dropbox is somewhat defeated. Basically Dropbox can't sync without connectivity and if you have connectivity then you would have access to the Keybase "file store" anyway.
    - eropple 8y ago
      > I take your point that they use different mechanisms to provide access to files which are not fully interchangeable. With that said, I think many people probably don't really care or have a need for offline access, since nowadays people almost always have connectivity. Given this I would say in many (maybe most?) instances Keybase could replace Dropbox in practice. Yeah, no, I don't think so. If my bus or train goes through a tunnel, losing my dotfiles or my OneNote notebooks or whatever else is pretty bad. Forget first world problems--"people almost always have connectivity" is some...like...zeroth world stuff.

mynegation 8y ago

As a developer I understand that each supported filesystem adds development workload and potential for bugs and at some point you need to weigh this cost against the benefit. The problem with this is that the people who use these filesystem are more likely to be opinion makers for other people in the choice of file syncing solution. Dropbox is big enough so they think they do not have to worry about it. But there is a real possibility that they will alienate just enough influential people, that this will erode their user base more than they realize.

unixhero 8y ago

Tragic

brightball 8y ago

I continue to wonder about Dropbox's support for Linux. It's been the primary reason that I use them so heavily and recommend them so often. If you look at the filename on the linux download is says 2015 in the filename. Has the linux client gone untouched for 3 years?

F00Fbug 8y ago

Syncthing will do the job. Yes, it doesn't implement a cloud store like Dropbox. You have a couple of alternatives: 1) get a cheap vps host (digitalocean, vultr, etc.) and make it part of your syncthing 'cluster'. 2) get a raspberry-pi running syncthing and a big external HD and put that somewhere else (parent's, brother's, office, etc.).

tanin 8y ago

Can anyone tldr the solution? I'm on Ubuntu and get the warning (stop syncing/move folder). Move to where? How do I get it to work on Ubuntu again?

patrickg_zill 8y ago

I keep wanting to use ZFS's incremental syncing across SSH - guess this is now a great excuse to set it all up on a Linux laptop!

rietta 8y ago

What's the reason for the move? I am on LUKs+EXT4 on my development workstation as full disk encryption on all devices is mandated by corporate policy and our contracts with clients.

kjullien 8y ago

I'll still be using my good ol' rsync, old as shit, so is sh, so is grep, so is vi, so is everything that your system is probably based on, and yet it simply works ! How convenient.

messe 8y ago

Seems ludicrous when XFS is the default file system for RHEL.

awill 8y ago
Yep. Dropbox is going to lose some customers. Maybe it won't be too many (compared to Windows/Mac), but the customers they will lose will be their most technical.
- Spivak 8y ago
  How many customers do you think are running RHEL as a desktop workstation and allowed to use Dropbox?
  - user5994461 8y ago
    If any, I bet they can be counted on one hand.

codemusings 8y ago

Self-hosted Nextcloud instance + AWS for storage puts you somewhere around $10 to $20 per month depending on how much space you need. Just throwing it out there. The sync client has worked flawelessly for me so far. Plus you get CalDAV/CardDAV right out of the box.

hiccuphippo 8y ago

Why do they need to directly support the underlying filesystem? Can't they have support for the high level fs api? Sure not as performant but at least will work.

xxpor 8y ago
read the post. they need xattrs support from the file system. now, why btrfs wouldn't work is beyond me.

xg15 8y ago

This seems like the equivalent of user-agent sniffing. So even though the problem is a feature (xattrs), they will try to detect whether or not the filesystem is ext4 and stop syncing otherwise? Is that correct? So, if other programs follow suit, will we start seeing options to lie about the filesystem type?

shmerl 8y ago

XFS and BTRFS are uncommon? Filesystem should be transparent to such things.

x0054 8y ago

I have been using Resilio Sync on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and it works a charm for me. In case this turns out to be a problem for you, maybe give them a try. Never an issue on Linux with Resilio Sync. I run a copy on my VPS in the cloud for remote storage.

andai 8y ago
I'm about to cancel my Dropbox subscription and move to Resilio, so I wanted to chime in and say I've had a great experience with Resilio in the past and my friends are also using it with great results. Btw: Resilio Sync used to be known as BitTorrent Sync.

whitexn--g28h 8y ago

Aside from the performance hit, can’t users of other file systems just add a loop back device and mount that for Dropbox?

ape4 8y ago

Its too bad there isn't a standard for Dropbox-like functionally yet. An RFC that everyone can write to.

toyg 8y ago
Technically there is WebDAV. Yeah I know, but it's there and it's a spec. Another de-facto spec is rsync, iirc tarsnap was basically built on that. At some point there might have been even a business or two that offered rsync access.
- ape4 8y ago
  Commercial rsync... https://rsync.net/ https://rsync.net/
- cperciva 8y ago
  You might be thinking of Duplicity -- it's based on rsync. Tarsnap works in a very different way.

erickj 8y ago

Well I for one will be taking the $0 per month that I spend on their free tier elsewhere

mongol 8y ago

Maybe I can figure out a way to automount a file formatted as ext4 in my home directory using systemd mount units.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
And then you'll have two problems...

jchw 8y ago

I gave up on Dropbox. Linux was always a second class citizen, and it only ever seems to get worse. If you are going to pay for something, Insync and Google Drive make a decent Dropbox alternative. I'll be honest, though, I simply stopped using syncing solutions like these, so I really don't know if there are now better options across platforms.

Walkman 8y ago

This is exactly why I stopped using Dropbox and moved everything I have to my own https://nextcloud.com https://nextcloud.com instance. It's very easy to install and upgrade, it is stable, have way more features than Dropbox and you have total control over your own data. Overall a superior experience. If they would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be done with it or just copy the files out of the /data/Nextcloud folder and move to another one open solution.

redm 8y ago
"If they would do something I don't like, I would just never upgrade anymore and be done with it." -- That sounds like a good strategy but in my experience, it never works because your technology environment is not a vacuum (I assume). At some point you'll need an upgrade for security, compatibility, etc.
- Walkman 8y ago
  It can run in a container, a virtual machine, hosted on a cloud instance or whatever. Nowadays, you have infinite choices for isolation. One of my colleague runs it in a DigitalOcean droplet and nothing else.
  - fanzhang 8y ago
    If you want to run your file sync client in a container, I think that limitation alone removes a huge amount of value from a low-friction file sync tool.
    - Walkman 8y ago
      Why would you run the client in a container? I was talking about the server.
      - Operyl 8y ago
        Because the client can be just as vulnerable to security issues as the server is.

cmurf 8y ago

I wonder if the xattr issue has anything to do with there being adequate abstraction of underlying file systems by the VFS? Btrfs, ext4, and XFS all support xattr, but I don't know if they all support xattr the same way via a single interface? And then how does that compare on macOS where there's JHFS+/HFSX and APFS?

8077628 8y ago

This is a tragic decision on Dropbox's part. The service's popularity is a product of it being stable and running everywhere. If they start pulling back compatibility, where does it end? Even if this change only impacts a small percentage of users, it threatens everyone that their compatibility may be revoked. Dropbox is violating their philosophy as a universal solution and squandering their key selling point for some small cost savings. What a horrible decision.

oneplane 8y ago

Well, that's just stupid. Why not check for extended attributes, and if they aren't there, call it unsupported.

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago

Ugh, I use Dropbox on several platforms, some NTFS, some APFS, some HFS and exFAT. The majority of my files are synced to exFAT because it's the only bloody filesystem that's officially supported across all major OS. No it doesn't support extended attributes and I don't care, 95% of my files are photos! If Dropbox go ahead with this I'm bailing. The only reason I use a managed service like this is so I don't have to care about the technical details (filesystems etc.)

nebulous1 8y ago

It appears this might be related to dropbox (mis)using statfs's f_fsid field as part of its authentication system. The dropbox devs apparently assumed that this field was stable, but on XFS (for instance) it can change. dropboxforum thread here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app/Dropbox-on-OpenSUSE-Leap-15-Linux-unlinks-after-restart/td-p/278624/page/3 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app...

cbhl 8y ago
Oof, although not surprising. Once saw a system that used inode numbers as "unique identifiers for files on local disk" and it turns out that on Linux / ext filesystems, they're not unique (they get reused if you delete a file and then create a new one). That team just decided to not support Linux at all.
gkoberger 8y ago
Sometimes it's not about assuming something is stable, but rather finding a workaround you need and hoping it lasts.
chadaustin 8y ago
That sounds to me like the most likely hypothesis in this thread. I mean, the Linux manpage itself says it's stable and can be used, with the inode number, to uniquely identify a file. http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statfs.2.html I'm not surprised, though. Fancy copy-on-write filesystems like btrfs have some other subtle gotchas. If you allocate (like, really, not as a hole) a big file on btrfs and mmap it for write, you might see a SIGBUS upon writing because btrfs needed to recompress a block and the new compressed block didn't fit where the old one did. I've gained a new appreciation for the predictability and simplicity of ext4.

phyzome 8y ago

I clicked expecting btrfs or zfs or something. Nope, NTFS is apparently "uncommon". Fascinating perspective. EDIT: Shit, misread -- those are the supported ones. Thanks for the headsmack. :-)

CommieBobDole 8y ago
NTFS, HFS+, APFS and Ext4 are the supported file systems, not the ones being dropped. Btrfs is being dropped.
sydd 8y ago
I think you misread. NTFS is one of the supported OSes

bayindirh 8y ago

Why not run a small set of tests after installing and see whether the required set of FS features available? Experienced users run plethora of filesystems which support the needs of dropbox. IMHO, this is a lazy solution to a relatively simple problem.

gwbas1c 8y ago
Most likely Dropbox needs to set these limits so that they can allocate their quality assurance department to very thoroughly test what they claim they support. I'm an architect for a Dropbox competitor. Sometimes we need to draw a line in the sand for what we support, and what we don't support. This is mostly due to balancing cost / benefit. A customer may do something strange that we don't support, and we have to weigh how many engineering resources it will take to support the customer. This can apply to unusual filesystems that we don't actively test our product with. IMO, Dropbox did the right thing. It's only real technical users who get into different kinds of filesystems; and these are the same kind of users who can understand, "Dropbox only works on X, Y, and Z."
- bayindirh 8y ago
  From a QA point you're actually right. I don't think Dropbox needs to support all filesystems, but as a programmer and and advocate of better user experience, I'd like to see a system which behaves a little differently: a- FS is something we support, great! Go on... b- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they pass warn the user: "Hey! We don't support this, but it looks like working. If it fails we can not support you. Are you sure? (Y/N)" c- FS is an unsupported one, so run the tests and if they fail tell the user: "Hey! We can not work on this FS, sorry.". The good thing is you implement the tests once. Since, POSIX standard is a standard, so run the tests over that interface. You practically don't need to maintain anything about the tests. Maybe run a couple of unit tests over a simulated environment, that's all.

jplayer01 8y ago

Well, so long Dropbox.

j_h 8y ago

Not really contributing anything useful. Just have to agree that this is a terrible move. Now I have to find another cloud solution for all of my linux computers.

fit2rule 8y ago

It is time for Dropbox to die. Seriously. Dropbox is but a new Linux kernel module away from being completely and utterly irrelevant. $ insmod ifps