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Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

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Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#31

Post by pdeuchler »

modoc wrote: post #20
jwr wrote: post #5

Dropbox is in my opinion synonymous with poor performance. The client always consumed way too much CPU. On a Mac, Dropbox will react to changes anywhere in the filesystem, and consume excessive amounts of CPU even if the files you work on have nothing to do with Dropbox. If you use selective sync, stuff that lands in folders not synced to your computer will still cause Dropbox to consume CPU. Storing a lot of files i…

Why would you put your git repo in DropBox? That seems counter-intuitive to me. I specifically keep anything in a VCS out of DropBox since then you're versioning stuff twice.... I have just under 150,000 files in DropBox and haven't noticed any performance issues. DropBox rarely shows up in Activity Monitor's first 20 CPU users (unlike MediaFire which is usually burning CPU for no reason and only managing 200 files).…

I store my whole workspace on Dropbox (minus some sensitive projects which are in my tarsnap-workspace). Every single one of my projects starts out with

>> mkdir projectname && cd projectname && git init

but not all of those projects end up on github/online repos.

Regardless, git is not backup, and dropbox isn't (real) versioning.

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#32

Post by vox_mollis »

blakeyrat wrote: post #29
zzleeper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me about Dropbox is that many of the complaints I had 7 years ago are still there... For instance, I can't exclude folders and extensions, which messes up my workflow a lot (e.g. I can't exclude .git folders)

Years ago I tried to buy a gift subscription of Dropbox for a friend so we could collaborate. Still impossible. These guys can't even manage GIFT CERTIFICATES, I'm not surprised they have trouble with actual technical issues.

Why do you take the punishment? There are tons of other storage+sync providers available.

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#33

Post by ars »

AYBABTME wrote: post #23
itslennysfault wrote: post #10

Typical Dropbox... I've been bugging them about a solution to the file limit for at least a year with no response. I finally got a (public) response by tweeting at them. They said they would follow up with me and they never did. Even a "we can't fix this" would be better than the dead air I've received. I really don't know how they intend to compete with the software giant's similar offerings if it's not via superior…

inotify has a limit on how many watches can be held. I don't think that 300k limit is particular to Dropbox, any tool working on the same principle will hit that limit.

They should watch the directory, not the file.

The limit is found here: /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches and defaults to 8K, not 300K, so I don't think it's the cause of this problem.

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#34

Post by lazy_lizard »

blakeyrat wrote: post #29
zzleeper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me about Dropbox is that many of the complaints I had 7 years ago are still there... For instance, I can't exclude folders and extensions, which messes up my workflow a lot (e.g. I can't exclude .git folders)

Years ago I tried to buy a gift subscription of Dropbox for a friend so we could collaborate. Still impossible. These guys can't even manage GIFT CERTIFICATES, I'm not surprised they have trouble with actual technical issues.

https://www.dropbox.com/gift

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#35

Post by lazy_lizard »

blakeyrat wrote: post #29
zzleeper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me about Dropbox is that many of the complaints I had 7 years ago are still there... For instance, I can't exclude folders and extensions, which messes up my workflow a lot (e.g. I can't exclude .git folders)

Years ago I tried to buy a gift subscription of Dropbox for a friend so we could collaborate. Still impossible. These guys can't even manage GIFT CERTIFICATES, I'm not surprised they have trouble with actual technical issues.

https://www.dropbox.com/gift

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#36

Post by zw »

gwbas1c wrote: post #28

I find this very strange, as the major file synchronization client that I work on doesn't have this problem. We use the fsevents API, and it's pretty localized to the folders we monitor. (I will admit that we have performance issues when users sync more than 100,000 files; but that's more due to fundamental limits of what you can do in a user-mode application.) Perhaps Dropbox is just trying to trap deleting / moving…

Based on the warnings in the Console log back when I used Dropbox, Dropbox isn't using fsevents API appropriately but is instead reading from the raw fsevents firehose.

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#38

Post by WillKirkby »

lazy_lizard wrote: post #35
blakeyrat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago I tried to buy a gift subscription of Dropbox for a friend so we could collaborate. Still impossible. These guys can't even manage GIFT CERTIFICATES, I'm not surprised they have trouble with actual technical issues.

https://www.dropbox.com/gift

"Sorry! Gifting isn’t available in your country yet. Sign up for notifications, and we’ll email you once it’s available."

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#39

Post by nodesocket »

I use Dropbox to sync my ~/Sites folder in OS X, between my three macs. It works.... Except when it can't figure out a conflict and creates CONFLICTED copies of git object, refs, head files. Quickly turns into a nightmare.

CONFLICTED copies in Dropbox drives me absolutely nuts, and should not happen since I never edit the files concurrently.

Re: Dropbox ignores user's complaints of poor performance for almost a year

#40

Post by shinratdr »

zzleeper wrote: post #26
shinratdr wrote: post #9

Poor performance, broken in Windows when using roaming profiles, storing binaries in the user's roaming AppData folder on Windows, DLL injection in Windows and god-knows-what in OS X to alter Explorer & Finder icons, low base storage. The only thing Dropbox has going for it is that somehow, everyone else is worse. Core syncing and client reliability is just trash across the board for all the other providers. But Drop…

What bothers me about Dropbox is that many of the complaints I had 7 years ago are still there... For instance, I can't exclude folders and extensions, which messes up my workflow a lot (e.g. I can't exclude .git folders)

> What bothers me about Dropbox is that many of the complaints I had 7 years ago are still there...

People have been complaining about the AppData binary thing and the roaming profiles issue since Dropbox launched.

I thought that FINALLY, after they had launched Dropbox for Business, it would come with an announcement that they had fixed Dropbox on roaming profiles and started storing the binary properly.

Nope. Just a branding initiative. I managed to screw around with it enough to get it working on my profile, but I've been unable to repeat that success, even with admin access. So, so annoying. iTunes works better in a corporate environment than Dropbox does.

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