Dropbox Is Dropping Support For All Linux File Systems Except Unencrypted Ext4 (dropboxforum.com)

New submitter rokahasch writes: Starting today, August 10th, most users of the Dropbox desktop app on Linux have been receiving notifications that their Dropbox will stop syncing starting November. Over at the Dropbox forums, Dropbox have declared that the only Linux filesystem supported for storage of the Dropbox sync folder starting the 7th of November will be on a clean ext4 file system. This basically means Dropbox drops Linux support completely, as almost all Linux distributions have other file systems as their standard installation defaults nowadays -- not to mention encryption running on top of even an ext4 file system, which won't qualify as a clean ext4 file system for Dropbox (such as eCryptfs which is the default in, for example, Ubuntu for encrypted home folders).

The thread is trending heavily on Dropbox' forums with the forum's most views since the thread started earlier today. The cries from a large amount of Linux users have so far remained unanswered from Dropbox, with most users finding the explanation given for this change unconvincing. The explanation given so far is that Dropbox requires a file system with support for Extended attributes/Xattrs. Extended attributes however are supported by all major Linux/Posix complaint file systems. Dropbox has, up until today, supported Linux platforms since their services began back in 2007. A number of users have taken to Twitter to protest the move. Twitter user troyvoy88 tweets: "Well, you just let the shitstorm loose @Dropbox dropping support for some linux FS like XFS and BTRFS. No way in hell im going to reformat my @fedora #development station and removing encryption no way!"

Another user by the name of daltux wrote: "It will be time to say goodbye then, @Dropbox. I won't store any personal files on an unencrypted partition."

Comments

If you care enough to encrypt a volume...

[llamalad]

why would you trust a cloud storage provider to keep a copy of it?

I don't get it.

[xvan]

Isn't dropbox sync a userland application? Why does it care about the underlying FS?

Re:I don't get it.

[slack_justyb]

Isn't dropbox sync a userland application? Why does it care about the underlying FS?

It doesn't. Someone at Dropbox basically did this.

select fstype, isencrypted, count(1) from dropboxusers where ispaying='Y' and ostype='linux' group by fstype, isencrypted

And the answer was overwhelmingly the configuration they are moving to.

Why...

[Stormy Dragon]

...does the Dropbox App even care about the low level details of the file system? Shouldn't they all look the same to it from an API perspective?

Open source the client

[AlanBDee]

They should open source their linux client then. I bet this boils down to them thinking that it cost them more money to maintain the client then the number customers they will lose by not having it. I know for me their linux support was one of the reason why I have been a long time user.

Anyone know of a good way to automatically sync photos taken on Android and Apple phones to my NAS at home? At this point that's about the only super handy feature from Dropbox that I use.

Re:Open source the client

[arth1]

They should open source their linux client then. I bet this boils down to them thinking that it cost them more money to maintain the client then the number customers they will lose by not having it.

Or it boils down to National Security Letters telling them that someone wants access to the unencrypted data, on a file system that doesn't do automatic wiping.

Why uses Dropbox?

[goosesensor]

What Linux user uses drop box? You're doing it wrong.

Ext4 not standard any more?

[jawtheshark]

What filesystem are you supposed to use then today? For my laptops I use ext4 on top of lvm, ok top of LUKS. For my desktops, it's without LUKS.

I thought ext4 was still pretty much standard.

Why does a synchronisation system even concern itself with filesystems?

Re:Who uses Linux anyway?

[war4peace]

Your wife knows your credentials? Man, your security's shit.

zvols.

[0100010001010011]

zfs create -V 10G tank/ext4
mkfs.ext4 /dev/zvol/tank/ext4
mount /dev/zvol/tank/ext4 /mnt/dropbox/

Plus you get snapshots, zfs-send, and all the other goodies that come with it.

Re:One word....

[BronsCon]

My text editor doesn't give a shit what filesystem I'm using. There's no real reason Dropbox should, either; they're doing file-level transactions, not block-level.