dropbox showing "Downloading X files..." for ever

Question

I have dropbox 52.4.58 installed on a Linux VM (Lubuntu 18.04 LTS). The dropbox instance can never finish syncing my folder and reach the Up to date status as a Windows version does on the same folder. Instead, the icon on Linux status bar always shows a busy status, and when hovering the mouse over it, it says:

Downloading 9 files...

for days. .

Currently, the folder does not seem to be in sync on my Windows and Linux machines. I have to stop and resume sync on the Linux instance to keep the folder synchronized. (The windows version works fine, and synchronize changes in minutes.) If I do so, dropbox (Linux) will restart indexing all files, and the changes will be pushed to other machines.

I also found a similar issue reported here.

Is it possible to show the 9 files that are being downloaded?

(If it's the same files causing the problem, I hope I can identify them and delete them. I'm familiar with python and linux shell. Any suggestions there are welcome.)

-- Update --

I did a shell query (as follows) for all file status as suggested in the comments, filtering out files that are up to date or unwatched. But the query returns nothing, meaning the files are either up to date or unwatched. Any further suggestions?

$ find /file/Dropbox -type f -exec dropbox filestatus {} \; | grep -v 'up to date' | grep -v 'unwatched'

Answer 1

The dropbox sub-command to use for checking the status of all dropbox files and directories is filestatus, defined in the dropbox man page as :

dropbox filestatus [-l] [-a] [FILE]...

  Prints the current status of each FILE.

  options:
    -l --list  prints out information in a format similar to ls. works best when your console supports color :)
    -a --all   do not ignore entries starting with .

    Aliases: stat

Under Linux, you may use it in the following way :

find ~/Dropbox -exec dropbox filestatus {} \; | grep 'syncing'

The folders and files listed by this command are the ones that cannot be synced to the target operating system.

For the poster, the problem was with directories that had very long names (about 180 characters), which apparently the Windows implementation of dropbox could not handle.

This is the result of a faulty implementation, as the Windows article Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces defines the real limitation :

The Windows API has many functions that also have Unicode versions to permit an extended-length path for a maximum total path length of 32,767 characters. This type of path is composed of components separated by backslashes, each up to the value returned in the lpMaximumComponentLength parameter of the GetVolumeInformation function (this value is commonly 255 characters). To specify an extended-length path, use the "\?\" prefix. For example, "\?\D:\very long path".

You should perhaps post a bug-report with dropbox.