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Asked: 2014-07-31 23:07:31 +0800 CST

Dropbox - Ubuntu 14.04LTS

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In the last few days I have noticed an oddity with the Dropbox folder in the Home directory.

I cannot be certain whether it is Ubuntu or Dropbox influenced hence the question here in case someone else has experienced it or can offer advice.

a file .dropbox (openable with geddit) which contains some lines of text:-

(dp1
Vtag
p2
S'dropbox'
p3
sVns
p4
L113047945L
s.

and a folder .dropbox.cache which itself contains another folder prefetch_cache which doesn't contain anything appears in the Dropbox folder which is used to sync with dropbox.

When closing down my PC last night (as the previous night) these files/folders were removed by me from the >Home>Dropbox folder. This morning, on switching on the PC, I checked the >Home>Dropbox folder to see that the files had returned. They are date/time stamped the time I switched my Ubuntu machine on.

I then checked my Dropbox account on the web by launching the dropbox website from the dropbox icon at the top of the screen and bizarrely these files/folders are not shown to be present - effectively invisible to dropbox itself.

Yesterday, following researchon this site, I opened a terminal and typed: 

`rm -R ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/*`

This does not seem to have have had a desirable effect as evidenced by the same problem appearing this morning.

This is not affecting my installation in any other way, just a curious annoyance deserving of some attention to get to the bottom of it.

All suggestions gratefully received.

dropbox

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The .dropbox file is used by Dropbox itself to track shared folders. So you should absolutely not delete it! It is not uploaded to your Dropbox, as Dropbox explicitly ignores it. This is outlined in their FAQ here:

    Ignored files

    Some small system files aren't synced over Dropbox. These include:

    desktop.ini
thumbs.db
.ds_store
icon\r
.dropbox
.dropbox.attr

    The folder you are talking about is mentioned here:

    How do I clear my cache?

    Dropbox keeps a cache of files hidden in your Dropbox for efficiency and for emergency purposes. If you've deleted a lot of files from your Dropbox but the file size has not changed to reflect the deletions, the files you deleted may be kept in your cache folder.

    Your cache folder is automatically cleared every three days. If you need to delete sensitive files immediately or need to clear up some space on your hard drive, you can manually clear the cache by following these steps:

    rm -R ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/*

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