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Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
- threeseed 13y agoThis happens to me as well. The Dropbox daemon wakes up every 10-15 seconds, uses 15% of the CPU then goes back to sleep. All this without any files changed or the index being affected. On 10.8, 10.9 with official versions and betas. Noticeable because I am on an older C2D MacBook Pro. Wondering whether it's a side effect of something else installed e.g. iStat Menus.
- czottmann 13y agoWhich Dropbox client version are we talking about?
- nicoschuele 13y agoAs it is a fresh install, the last one.
- czottmann 13y agov2.2.8, then. Thanks.
- lord_quas 13y agoThats awful, one can only assume this affects MBP as well. I think I'll now only turn DB on whenever I'm on A/C.
- nicoschuele 13y agoYeah, it sucks big time. DB is at the center of my workflow. Having my git repository in it, my projects plans, etc. I just have to not forget to "turn on, sync, turn off, work, turn on sync, turn off". On the other hand, I didn't notice any difference in battery consumption on my Windows 8 laptops. Who knows, maybe OS X Mavericks will change that with the way it handles processes?
- omarrr 13y ago> I use it to store my code repository [...] Not using Dropbox is not an option for me as I switch machines several times during the day. I'd suggest you invest in a hosted git repo.
- nicoschuele 13y agoI store a lot more than just a git repo in Dropbox. I also use it to share files, etc. But yes, I'm starting to look at alternatives. Maybe I'll develop a small utility to push/pull/share files from my home NAS upon request rather than having a continuous process running in the background.
- tluyben2 13y agoYou can also, what I did, switch dropbox off and switch it on only when you are connected to power for a sync. It's not ideal, but it works. I don't see how dropbox could do better though. If you do it manually to your NAS, you basically do the same as switching dropbox on/off or dropbox in a cronjob. Anything monitoring your file system and synching up with many small files will incur load like this.
- tommorris 13y agoI use ControlPlane - http://www.controlplaneapp.com/ http://www.controlplaneapp.com/ - which monitors your "context" (like location etc.) and lets you trigger events on context change. Just added some rules so that Dropbox quits when I'm in my "mobile" context, but reopens when I am in my "home" or "office" contexts. Will see whether it works on my commute later.
- tluyben2 13y agoI see this problem happening only to me when it's used as code repository. Which is what he is doing. I had that for one project because the client didn't want to use git, but it's horrible. So, logically, when you have a lot of files changing all the time (compiling (xcode, eclipse), adding libraries (node, RoR)) you'll see dropbox taking over your computer. For all other uses it seems fine. Note also that when you have the issue with a lot of small files, during/after dropbox is done, Finder / mds will jump to the top of your top indexing the files. I disabled mds in my projects directory and will never place active source directories in dropbox again.
- mtts 13y agoWell, yes, but if you read the result of his tests even with syncing turned off Dropbox is still eating about 500 mAh. And that is, I would say, rather strange.
- tluyben2 13y agoYou are right. That is strange. I never tried turning synching off; I just turn Dropbox off entirely. But is that load not a result of the FS monitoring? Or does that take far less in itself?
- andor 13y agoI guess the Python interpreter is preventing the CPU from entering lower sleep states.
- cnvogel 13y agoThat finding might be quite interesting and all... but I'm thoroughly confused about that guy always quoting power consumption in mAh (which is the unit for electrica charge). I'd also check if that guy's dropbox daemon(s) are stuck in an obvious loop. I'm logged on in my private server, and when it's idle there's hardly any activity on the dropbox threads, the main CPU consumer is one servicing what I suspect to be the main select() loop. And that thread basically stat()ing the .dropbox/config.dbx file every 2 seconds, and reads 16 bytes out of it. That should hardly be measureable in terms of power consumptions on a modern CPU.
- nicoschuele 13y agoThanks for pointing this out. It's a typo, I meant mA, not mAh. Fixed.
- demallien 13y agoNo, that is not a typo. Thos is a typo - an error created during the mechanical act of typing. Yours was just a plain mistake, you got the units wrong. Own it and learn from the error instead of excusing it away.
- 1_player 13y agoBad day at work?
- nicoschuele 13y agoMuch anger, sense I can.
- Uchikoma 13y agoI guess you might not be as good with words in Schwizerdütsch as he is in English.
- nicoschuele 13y agoLol. Thanks. But I'm from the french-speaking part of the country.
- bherms 13y agoI had this happen in the past too and found it to be the result of two issues: 1) Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. 2) There were a few files in a folder than had the owner set to the wrong owner and Dropbox couldn't get permission to access them. This caused it to get stuck in a loop trying to sync those files and Dropbox ended up running my CPU up to over 100% load. Fix those issues and you shouldn't see it causing any more problems with your battery life.
- easytiger 13y ago> Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. I really have to say honestly: no shit. Sorry if i sound crass but really? When you use an arbitrary piece of software to automatically modify 100s of files the piece of software designed to detect that exact event has do do work and you are complaining? The mind boggles
- simonh 13y agoWhich part of that comment looked to you like a complaint?
- officialjunk 13y agoeasy tiger
- bherms 13y agoWasn't complaining at all... Just pointing out the mistake I made.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoTry this: separate out the git directory from the working directory so that the working directory is not in dropbox but the git directory is. That might solve some of your problems. E.g.: git --git-dir=/home/me/dropbox/git/proj --work-tree=/home/me/proj init
- da_maire 13y agoI have a cron script running on my MacBook to make sure the Dropbox client priority is always set to 20 (lowest). I also pause the client manually when moving to battery power. I really wish there was a better solution, like switching to a similar service that offers decent (or at least acceptable) software, but almost everyone else uses the same setup with terrible 'universal' Java/Python/etc-based clients that absolutely suck at synchronizing large amounts of data.
- rasmuskl 13y agoOne solution to the whole "storing source in dropbox" problem that I liked to use previously (using bitbucket now instead) is just to have a bare git repo in dropbox + the real checkout somewhere else and just push commits to the bare dropbox repo whenever I'm about to switch machine. Could even be set up to happen more automagically since the repo isn't shared. Syncing binaries (I mainly work in C#) and lots of small changes seems silly to me.
- diziet 13y agoDoesn't seem to happen with the latest self-updated version of dropbox and 10.8.4 to such an extreme, on a retina MBP. I get 15 extra minutes.
- maikhoepfel 13y agoThe only takeaway is that his power usage shouldn't be that high with Dropbox idling/paused. But given that he's * surprised at it using a lot of power when doing the initial sync * decided to have a git repo inside Dropbox (just don't do it, you will run into trouble; and it will cause heavy sync activity, thus waking CPU and wifi) * using a unit of capacity to express power consumption I'm not sure I trust his methods. I regularly turn off Dropbox on and off when switching between mobile broadband and wifi, and haven't seen any difference in power consumption. That's on Ubuntu 13.04 @ Thinkpad T530.
- threeseed 13y agoDropbox behaves very differently on OSX versus Linux I've found.
- throwaway2048 13y agolikely because linux has inotify
- andor 13y agoEvery modern operating system has inotify-like capabilities. Mac OS has an integrated desktop search since 2005, which wouldn't be feasible without filesystem events.
- aidos 13y agoDropbox has its own process though, doesn't it? dbfseventsd. sudo fs_usage -w I've been watching it recently and it seems to touch files that it shouldn't need to. I need to do more investigation. I uninstalled backblaze recently because I discovered that it manually scans the whole filesystem _all the time_.
- Osmium 13y agoThanks for the Backblaze info! That's really good to know. Do you know if CrashPlan is any saner? Resource usage was a big factor when deciding between the two, and I want to know if I've made the right choice :)
- jwr 13y agoDropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly useless, as it consumes so much CPU and eats so much battery life, that it simply isn't worth the effort. Another problem with Dropbox is that upon login it indexes the entire Dropbox, which if you have an HDD basically kills the machine for several minutes, e.g. you can't do anything else. That happens to me on a Mac Pro. On an SSD-equipped MacBook things are better, but it's still a monstrous operation. And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so, b) dropbox could work a little more on optimizing CPU usage instead of adding "save your photos to Dropbox" features.
- davedx 13y ago> And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so I'm genuinely curious: why do this, as opposed to using a DVCS like git?
- stinos 13y agosame question here. If you can get free private git repositories on services like bitbucket, it's sort of a mystery to me why one would want to lose true versioning and go with plain backup instead.
- snom380 13y agoYou can have both. If you put your working directory in Dropbox you will have a copy of your uncommitted work as well. Also, in many cases it is easier for a graphic designer or just a customer to put stuff in a Dropbox folder that will sync to their website, than uploading stuff using a web form or learning to use git and X amount of deployment tools.
- zurn 13y agoLaptop operating systems need to start keeping tabs on what's using your battery, like Android does (with mixed success but that's another story).
- 9h1d9j809s 13y agoOS X 10.9 does show battery use per app in the Activity Monitor. It also shows a short list of battery-draining apps right in the battery menu at the top of the screen.
- lcnmrn 13y agoOpen Dropbox when you need to sync, then quit the process. Make sure it doesn't run at OS X start up. I don't see why most of the users want to have a perfect sync all day long since it doesn't happen in real time (large files, slow network, etc.)
- nicholassmith 13y agoThis is interesting, I've also got a 2013 MBA and use DropBox but I've not seen a big dip in battery usage. I might do a bit more testing this week and see whether it has had an impact and I've just not realised, and/or I've put it down to the code-compile-simulator cycle.
- TheAnimus 13y agoOh if only it was one App that killed the battery on the last laptop I bought. Before nuking the default windows install, I did a quick test, with all the crapware that comes as standard, it managed about 4 hours. Fresh install 6.5 hours.
- nicoschuele 13y agoMac. Doesn't come with crapware. For Windows boxes, there's decrapifier.
- FreezerburnV 13y agoDoesn't Windows 8 come with a built-in "remove everything and fresh install the OS" button now? Can always use that.
- 9h1d9j809s 13y agoI have noticed this as well. And it's not just Dropbox. I have turned off Dropbox, Google Drive and Little Snitch.
- watson 13y agoCan anyone confirm his findings? I imagine that if this is real, then this is a problem for all MacBook owners not just the latest MacBook Air. I have a 13" MacBook Air, medio 2011. I bought it almost right after it was released and have used it as my only computer almost every day since. I have the Dropbox agent running all the time. While working last Sunday I got 5.5 hours of battery life out of it and I've never taken good care of the battery. I never drain it unless I'm not near a power outlet, in which case I just have it plugged in all day. My current battery health information shows: Cycle Count: 253, Condition: Normal
- OrdojanAndrius 13y agoSince I'm stuck using an old computer I made a small script that turns Dropbox on every few hours and kills it after 10 minutes. I don't sync data all the time so this solution works well for me and I save system resources.
- Osmium 13y agoI switched from Dropbox to SpiderOak recently, and they're a bit better, but feels so clunky. I'm just about fed up with all of them. I use CrashPlan for backups and they're at least good for CPU usage because they have a preference -- max CPU (%) when you're at the computer, and max CPU when you're away, which really does help. Those who are using Dropbox may find something like cpulimit[1] useful. This limits the CPU usage of any process by repeatedly sending SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals to your process. It's on homebrew for OS X. I think there're some other alternatives available too but can't remember off hand. But if the article's accurate, Dropbox has issues even when it's not indexing heavily. [1] https://github.com/opsengine/cpulimit https://github.com/opsengine/cpulimit
- rsanders 13y agoA non-open-source OS X app called AppTamer can be very handy for managing battery life. You can set process priority and automatically pause non-foreground GUI apps. So when you switch away from your CPU chewing IDE, it'll get SIGSTOP'd.
- Already__Taken 13y agoI push to a bare repo in a dropbox folder because I can't for the life of me get a secure connection through the work firewalls / proxy so I don't bother and let dropbox deal with it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- waterhouse 13y ago"I just have to change my habit of having it constantly on while working. Turn Dropbox on and sync before starting to work and then turn it off." Hohoho. Allow me to suggest a solution. Suppose that you would be ok with having Dropbox sync files every five minutes. Let's suppose that 10 seconds is usually more than enough to do whatever syncing is necessary. Well, then: $ while :; do killall -STOP Dropbox; sleep 300; killall -CONT Dropbox; sleep 10; done I do things like this to throttle the CPU usage and, in some cases, the power consumption of applications that really don't need what they're using. This really should be a feature provided by the operating system, but in the meantime, I resort to ridiculous hacks of this sort. (Note that, if you ^C the above loop, Dropbox will likely be still STOPped and you'll have to CONT it again. It is possible to write a more sophisticated program to address this problem.)