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Affects: 14.04 / 14.10 / 15.04 / 15.10 / 16.04 / 16.10

I started my dropbox deamon today, with the following result in the panel:

Icon

The icon with the warning/failed symbol should be my Dropbox icon. I cannot right-click or left-click it, so no interaction.

I am running Xubuntu 15.10 on 4.2.0-27-generic x64. I also tried to re-install Dropbox, reinstall nautilus-dropbox, recursively delete ./cache/sessions/ as well as set other themes and icon sets.

Apparently nothing helped and similar problems described here and on other boards are similar, not the same and do not work in my case.

Glorfindel
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user1252280
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10 Answers10

51

A more recent workaround that works for more Linux operating systems than the DBUS_SESSION one:

dropbox stop && dbus-launch dropbox start

EDIT: To make this permanent see answer by @juankvillegas below.

Community
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Juan M. Gonzalez
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31

The answer given by @Juan M. Gonzalez is the best one, but you have to run that command every time you restart your PC.

A permanent fix would be:

  • Run the proposed command once to make the Dropbox icon appear in your notification area: dropbox stop && dbus-launch dropbox start
  • Open Dropbox preferences (click on the Dropbox icon in the notification area).
  • Disable "Start Dropbox on system startup" and apply your changes.
  • Go to XFCE settings > Session and Startup > Application Autostart.
  • Search for an existing Dropbox item and confirm it is disabled.
  • Add a new item with this configuration (do not edit the existing Dropbox item because it is recreated in each reboot):
    • Name: Dropbox
    • Command: dbus-launch dropbox start -i
  • Be sure that the new application is enabled in the list.
Community
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juankvillegas
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6

This instruction only work for Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio 16.04 (Not working in 17.04)

In you terminal run

sudo gedit /usr/bin/dropbox

Create a new line after import os and add the following: 

os.environ['DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS'] = ""

Save and rebot

Here a Gif I made:

Gif tutorial

And, if someday Dropbox update and not working more, repeat this tutorial

Reference:

Dropbox icon is not working Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64

This applies to UbuntuStudio 15.10, 16.04 and Xubuntu (both based on XFCE)

Indacochea Wachín
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5

This worked for me (xubuntu 15.10):

DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="" dropbox start

That is shown here:

Dropbox icon is not working Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64

Community
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Fernando Basso
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3

I think it's an issue related to the indicator plug-in. If you don't use it, I suggest you remove it from your panel. The Dropbox icon should then appear normally in the notification area.

Alex Fortin
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3

I had the same problem on Linux Mint 17. The solution for me was

dropbox stop && DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="" dropbox start
muru
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George O.
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3

Here's what I did in Xubuntu 16.04

I remove the indicator applet.

The Dropbox icon appeared.

I added the indicator applet. Moved it to where it was before.

Done !

DropBox icon

To get Dropbox integration in Thunar:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/extras

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install thunar-dropbox-plugin

Thunar integration

1LinuxGuy
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I finally got it working reliably.

  1. Remove the indicator-plugin from the panel. The dropbox icon now appears properly in the Notification Area. The network connection appears there too. But the audio control is now gone.
  2. Add the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin using synaptic. Then add it to the panel.
  3. Log out, then log back in. Everything should show up properly.
Syster
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2

Make sure that Notification Area is an item in Panel Preferences; the icon will be shown in Notification Area.

Run the following in terminal:

dropbox stop && dbus-launch dropbox start

Then right-click the Dropbox icon, and click "Preferences...". Disable "Start Dropbox on system startup".

If you use saved sessions, make sure dropbox is not an item in them: Start the session, run dropbox stop and thereafter save the session.

Create an init script for dropbox by running this once in terminal as regular:

echo 'description "Dropbox"
start on desktop-start
expect daemon
exec env DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS= dropbox start -i' >"${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-$HOME/.config}/upstart/dropbox.conf"

Note: In 12.04 you have to store the file in "$HOME/.init", instead. In 14.04 the directory is deprecated. See Upstart documentation.

Note: env DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS= could be replaced by dbus-launch in the above.

Now you can start dropbox by

start dropbox

Then icon should be visible.

The service will be started automatically after next login. The init script starts dropbox in such a way that it is invisible to the session manager and will not be saved in sessions thereafter.

I tested it in 14.04 (that uses Upstart) and 16.04 (that uses systemd). Updating dropbox should not break this fix like it does with some other solutions.

I got some of the ideas from this answer. There is some background information in that answer.

jarno
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1

In Xubuntu 16.04, I found this to work:

  1. sudo mousepad /usr/bin/dropbox
  2. After import os add os.environ['DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS'] = ""
  3. dropbox stop
  4. dropbox start
Videonauth
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Syster
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