Fixing problems with Dropbox in Ubuntu 12.04

Following a slight booting problem caused by trying to make some more space on my laptop for Ubuntu, I ended up upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04. I hadn't planned to as my laptop is now six years old and I wasn't sure if it would cope. It's not doing too badly but I did have a problem with Dropbox, one of the first programs I tried to install. Turns out there's a bug with the version available through the Software Centre.

The download direct from Dropbox is the answer but getting the old version off first turned out to be a little harder than I expected.

The problem was that the Software Centre had got stuck installing Dropbox. A Dropbox icon appeared in the Launcher bar on the left but not in the Notification Area. Every so often Dropbox would ask for my Admin password but wouldn't do anything with it.

Having a go at fixing it at the Terminal didn't work either as I got a message saying that an important folder was locked. Roughly translated that means something else is using it so leave it alone.

If I did manage to start installation of Dropbox again at the Terminal it got stuck at 99% downloaded and wouldn't do anything else.

A quick browse of the Dropbox website and Launchpad (the site for bugs and fixes for Ubuntu) revealed that I wasn't alone and thankfully included a solution.

Start the Terminal. Click on the Ubuntu icon, type Terminal and click on the icon. As an aside I rather like the Byobu Terminal, available through the Software Centre. Type the following commands

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --purge remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

I left off the recommendation to also use the command sudo apt-get --reinstall install nautilus-dropbox as the Dropbox website has a new download. These commands should remove both the files for Dropbox and the instruction to try and install it. There are a couple of alternative suggestions for getting the same effect across the Dropbox and Launchpad sites.

The go to the Dropbox website and download the installation file for Dropbox. Double-click on it to start installation.

After that it worked without any further problems.