Problem with syncing to dropbox

Help and Support
1

I am using rclone 1.51.0 on Windows 7 x64. I created encrypted remote for dropbox with their free plan with 2GB of storage. I have setup scheduled backup for three program folders that run every hour. Today i login to my dropbox account and i saw that my dropbox storage have reached 2GB which should not be possible, because the whole size of my backup was about 600MB. I checked the size if Firefox folder and it showed size of 1.968GB and the local size of my Firefox folder is around 500MB.

This is the command i use:

rclone sync e: dropbox-crypt: --filter-from=e:\scripts\RClone\dropbox.com\filter-file.txt --log-file=e:\scripts\RClone\logs\DropboxCrypt.txt --log-level ERROR

And this is the content of the filter-file.txt:

- cache/**
- Cache/**
- cache2/**
+ /PortableApps/Firefox/**
+ /PortableApps/KeePass/**
+ /PortableApps/CintaNotes/**
- *

This is the size of my local firefox folder: https://i.imgur.com/uKZ3TLP.png

And this is the size of firefox folder i downloaded from dropbox. There is updated folder that do not exist on my local firefox folder: https://i.imgur.com/MCFO3RP.png

And a storage folder that is 1.4GB: https://i.imgur.com/hffx8Vm.png

2

Best to use the question template.

If you check the items in the folder and compare, what's different?

When you run the sync command, use -vv and share a debug log and you can see what's there and what's not there.

3

Use rclone ncdu dropbox-crypt: to see where the excess files are on dropbox and compare it to rclone ncdu e:

Maybe that updates folder was transient while firefox downloaded some updates?

4

I compared the folders and the folders that do not match by size are the ../storage/default folders. The remote folder is with a lot bigger size than that on my pc. And i am seeing the same issue with my gdrive encrypted remote, because i am uploading my firefox folder there too. The ../storage/default folder is with a lot bigger size than my local folder. It seems the issue is with this ../storage/default folder. I see it contains folders with long names containing special characters, i don't know if this is not causing problems.

I deleted my dropbox backup and uploaded my folder again. I am monitoring the ../storage/default folder and it's increasing its size with every run, while the local folder stays with the same size. The log file doesn't show any errors related to that folder, but show these errors:

2020/04/11 17:04:22 ERROR : Encrypted drive 'dropbox-crypt:': not deleting files as there were IO errors
2020/04/11 17:04:22 ERROR : Encrypted drive 'dropbox-crypt:': not deleting directories as there were IO errors
2020/04/11 17:04:24 ERROR : PortableApps/Firefox/Profiles/default/parent.lock: Failed to copy: failed to open source object: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

parent.lock error is not that important, but i don't know what the other errors mean.

I don't know about the updated folder. The syncing is run every hour and i am not sure if that day firefox received any updates.

5

that updated folder seems to have something to with portableapps and firefox.
if you search the internet, you can read about it.

if you are low on space with dropbox, you do not need to backup the firefox cache folder

6

Firefox cache folder is excluded. I don't use portableapps installer, i just changed firefox install location, and also the profile location.

7

You need to fix this error otherwise rclone doesn't delete any files on the destination which would explain why it keeps growing.

Just use --exclude parent.lock to skip over that file

8

Is this the right way to put parent.lock file in filter-file.txt:

- parent.lock
- cache/**
- Cache/**
- cache2/**
+ /PortableApps/Firefox/**
+ /PortableApps/KeePass/**
+ /PortableApps/CintaNotes/**
- *
9

you can try it yourself.

https://rclone.org/docs/#n-dry-run
"Do a trial run with no permanent changes. Use this to see what rclone would do without actually doing it."

10

I excluded parent.lock and run dropbox sync and that fixed the issue. Now the folders size match. And the log also doesn't show any errors.

11

So, if i understand correctly, if there is a open file on my local pc that rclone can't sync, it won't delete any files on the remote server. Basically, it will act as copy command. It will upload new and modified files without deleting any files remotely. Is that correct?

12

That is correct yes. That is behaviour copied from rsync - if there is a problem reading the listing then you don't want rclone deleting lots of files.

13

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