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Every time I run dropbox update I get the following error. Yeah, no idea what that means.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1436, in <module>
    ret = main(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1425, in main
    result = commands[argv[i]](argv[i+1:])
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 845, in update
    download()
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 586, in download
    get_download_debug_info(download.url, ex))
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'ex' referenced before assignment
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  • What version of dropbox? Can the version be upgraded?
    – jmreicha
    Aug 30, 2014 at 17:07
  • I'm not sure what version number, but it's an older one (I actually got an email from Dropbox warning met o update it before it lost support). I get to that error after typing in dropbox upgrade, it looking and finding an update, downloading it, and then attempting to install. During the installation process that happens and it fails.
    – dougoftheabaci
    Aug 31, 2014 at 17:38
  • Hmm, I wonder if Python is having problems then. You may also try blowing out the install and starting fresh.
    – jmreicha
    Sep 2, 2014 at 15:36
  • I actually tried that, but I'm a Linux newbie and I failed to do that. Do you know where I could find an idiot's guide to uninstalling Dropbox on an Ubuntu 14.04 headless server?
    – dougoftheabaci
    Sep 3, 2014 at 17:12
  • Depends. Are you comfortable with Linux CLI? If so, something like this should do the trick - dropbox.com/help/41
    – jmreicha
    Sep 4, 2014 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

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I had the same problem and solved it as follows:

(Note, you might have dropbox installed in various ways, it can be installed as a package nautilus-dropbox or in your home directory at ~/.dropbox-dist and possibly both which is confusing.)

  1. Uninstall all dropbox installations:
    • If you've got the package nautilus-dropbox installed then uninstall it: sudo apt-get remove nautilus-dropbox and check there's nothing left in /var/lib/dropbox
    • Follow the steps to uninstall (click "Linux" in the top right of this page) which is basically sudo apt-get remove dropbox; rm -rvf ~/.dropbox ~/.dropbox-dist (avoid deleting your actual files from ~/Dropbox)
  2. Install latest version:
    • Follow steps here (under "Install Dropbox via command line") to install it in your home directory
    • it ends up in ~/.dropbox-dist (avoid installing the package nautilus-dropbox on a server, it'll give you another copy of dropbox in /var/lib/dropbox which gets confusing).
  3. To control Dropbox from command line:
    • Download the command line control script dropbox.py (should also be linked to from here)
    • Make it executable chmod +x ~/Scripts/dropbox.py and then make a symlink to it sudo ln -s ~/Scripts/dropbox.py /usr/bin/dropbox
    • Then you can control it with things like dropbox status see dropbox help for more
  4. If you want Dropbox to auto-start on startup, follow a guide like this to make a service script /etc/init.d/dropbox
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  • I got this mostly/slightly working through just brute force, but this is basically what I needed to do, plus a few extra steps to get me the last mile. Perfect!
    – dougoftheabaci
    Jan 2, 2015 at 23:00
  • great, glad to hear it @dougoftheabaci! if there are common things that I missed off I'd be glad to hear them & potentially add to the list?
    – sparrowt
    Jan 3, 2015 at 2:41
  • Nope, looks good to me. I didn't know the bit about the Nautilus package. Good thing I skipped that this time around.
    – dougoftheabaci
    Jan 4, 2015 at 10:30

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