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Forum Discussion
Jophus
Aug 16, 2018Luminary
"Choose a new home for your dropbox" - btrfs no longer supported
What is Netgear's response to the actions of Dropbox? Thanks.
Hi xxxxxxx,
On November 7, 2018 the Dropbox system requirements are changing. To make sure that your files continue to sync, you’ll need to move your Dropbox folder to a drive that meets the new requirements.
What to do next
Choose a new location for your Dropbox folder:
- ReadyNAS, Linux 4.4.111.x86_64.1
Move Dropbox to an Ext4 drive
Why this is changing
Newer file systems let us use the latest technology to help keep your files safe and synced in Dropbox.
- The Dropbox Team
7 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- mdgm-ntgrNETGEAR Employee Retired
Checking with engineering on this.
Do you have Dropbox connected to any other devices using filesystems that Dropbox will no longer support? Wanting to make sure that the emaily you got is relating to your use of Dropbox on the ReadyNAS.
Are you using the in-built Dropbox function from the cloud tab or the 3rd party app from rnxtras.com ?
Obviously some users who are comfortable with SSH and have plenty of RAM could run a VM in VirtualBox but doing so would be unsupported. Hopefully there's a better way than that.
I can see that there's been a lot of feedback provided to Dropbox on their community: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Dropbox-client-warns-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/td-p/290058
We switched from using EXT4 in previous products to using the newer filesystem BTRFS. OS6 has always used BTRFS and we have no plans to change to a different filesystem. We released our first ReadyNAS OS6 systems over 5 years ago and the use of BTRFS has become more and more common on Linux machines in the years following.
BTRFS is superior to EXT4 in so many different ways. Features such as CoW (Copy-on-Write), Snapshots, Bit-rot protection, compression and more are very useful and important to many users and users that don't want to use those features don't have to.
We do let you use a range of other cloud providers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc.
- JophusLuminary
I'm using rnxtras version. I have dropbox only on this one linux NAS box. I use windows PC's as clients. It looks like only my NAS would be affected.
It would be good to get some clarity from Netgear around how existing Dropbox functionality works and if this change will bork OS6's implementation.
If Dropbox change their tune, and OS6 remains supported, I will jump to that from rnx.
- mdgm-ntgrNETGEAR Employee Retired
In that case it'd be up to the rnxtras.com developer to see what they can do about their 3rd party app if anything. It may end up needing to be discontinued.
Engineering informs me that "The announcement is about the syncing client implemented by Dropbox. Since the Dropbox syncing service in ReadyNAS OS has nothing to do with Dropbox Linux client software and does not depend on it, ReadyNAS is not affected by this announcement."
The Dropbox syncing service in ReadyNAS OS is very different to the rnxtras.com app. The rnxtras.com app uses the Dropbox Linux client software.
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