Dropbox Syncing Problems

Question

Hi Guys,I am currently using the new Netgear NAS 102 with the OS 6.0.4 firmware on it and am having issues with Dropbox sync I hope you can help with.  I have set the DropBox to syncronise my Photos folder with Dropbox, only it seems to have a bizarre process to do it.  When I initially set it up the process sync'ed around 3 GB of my data then decided to download all of this data back to the ReadyNAS.   After it had downloaded a section of the files it then decided to upload more of the data.  I am currently looking to sync a folder with around 56GB of photos in it.  Now each time I restart my readynas it downloads all the files before the uploading more. This frankly is a bit useless really, is the readynas not supposed to keep a track of what is sync'ed like the dropbox apps do?   Is there a way to manually look at the dropbox settings on the readynas and then edit them to stop this? The on/off button really doesn't give my user flexibility.Dan

OOM-9 · Answer

Do you have the upgraded account (100GB) with Dropbox, so you are able up upload the 56GB?
Upload will depend on what upload speed you may have with your ISP. What is the upload you are working with?

The ReadyNAS does seem to sync and start downloading what is needs to even after a reboot. All though I am not sure how Dropbox would handle trying to sync more data that what is allowed.

chirpa · Answer

Looking at the /frontview/bin/fvdropbox binary, it uses the curl library to call dropbox.com APIs directly. Maybe there is an atomic timestamp issue, that it thinks the remote files are newer, so it downloads them again each time the service starts. It then uses inotify to find changed files, and upload them.

(r2d2, nothing confidential here. I used the 'strings' command (binutils package), which shows ascii text in binaries.)

# strings /frontview/bin/fvdropbox
DropBox utitlity and sync server
This probram use 'parson' (a light json parser and reader) by Krzysztof Gabls, under MIT license.
See http://kgabis.github.com/parson/ for 'parson'.
  # %s -h                           ... show this help
  # %s [-v 0..3]                    ... start service
  # %s [-v n] [-V] [-d]             ... start service
  # %s [-v n] [-V] -- cmd args...   ... run utility command
    -v n ... verbose. n=0..3.
    -d   ... debug service without started by systemd
    info ... Get user info. (call /account/info API.)
      ... File listing. (call /metadata API.)
    put [-f] local_path remote_path
      ... Upload file. (call /file_put API.) (Up to 150MB)
         -f :  forces update. otherwise update if newer.
    get [-f] remote_path local_path
      ... Download file. (call /files (GET) API.)
         -f :  force download. otherwise download if newer.
    sync [-c cursor] remote_folder local_folder
      ... Download all if newer. Then upload all if newer.
      ... Get file/directory info. (call /metadata API.)
         -l :  with list=true (default: list=false)
    upload [-f] local_path remote_path
      ... Upload file. (call /chunked_upload API.)
      ... Create a folder (call /create_folder API.)
      ... Delte folder or file (call /delete API.)
This program should be started by systemd.

# /frontview/bin/fvdropbox -v 2 -V -d -- info
display_name=my name
quota=24561844224
email=my@email.addr

If you change the "-v 2" to "-v 3", you can see all the debug values. Scary that they don't verify the SSL certificate either, someone could hijack api.dropbox.com via DNS cache poisoning, and get your info. They call HTTPS with plaintext oauth secret key in the URL.

dbox_utils.c:84(debug) [curl]* 	 SSL certificate verify result: unable to get local issuer certificate (20), continuing anyway.
box_utils.c:84(debug) [curl]< GET /1/account/info?oauth_consumer_key=REDACTED&oauth_token=REDACTED&oauth_signature_method=PLAINTEXT&oauth_signature=REDACTED&oauth_timestamp=REDACTED&oauth_nonce=REDACTED HTTP/1.1

Maybe this 'mode' could be changed to become a one-way push to dropbox, not bi-directional.

# cat /etc/frontview/dropbox/config.xml 
<DropBoxConfiguration xmlns="urn:netgear:nas:readynasd" mode="bidir">
  <ShareId><![CDATA[data/readydrop]]></ShareId>

danielw · Answer

Thanks for the help Guys.Yes,  I have an upgraded DropBox account so I currently have just over 100GB of storage available.  The upload speed I am working with is 1.2 mbps so appreciate its going to take probably over a week to upload everything.I don't seem to remember it uploading and then downloading stuff after each boot on the old firmware.  I have noticed that it actually uploads only a certain amount and then downloads everything after a certain amount of time regardless of reboot.  Do you think it would be better to upload evrything to dropbox then move this folder into the apps folder so it downloads it to the netgear nas.  Will this change the way it sync's or should I look to change the code you suggested?

chirpa · Answer

It looks like they have some glitches to resolve in the DropBox functionality. I've also seen it not handle file/folder renaming. I end up with the old name, and the new name, twice as much data stored. All other DropBox clients saw the change fine, cept for the ReadyNAS.

They also stripped out the command line arguments message I posted above in 6.0.5 firmware.

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Dropbox Syncing Problems

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