Dropbox Icon problem (Lubuntu 17.04)

**M_Mynaardt** · June 29th, 2017

Hi, All.

I installed Lubuntu 17.04 recently on a Netbook someone gave to me as a freebie.
It's working fine, with the exception of the Dropbox Icon.
I just get that funny does nothing icon instead of the Dropbox icon.
The daemon is working, though, because I do get notification about updates being done and such.

I found one work around this was in the terminal:

Code:

$ dropbox stop
$ dbus-launch dropbox start

However, it's mildly annoying to do that every time I boot up.

I tried to disable Dropbox in the autostart and have dbus-launch dropbox start manually inputed.
But the Dropbox keeps getting reselected every time I start up Lubuntu and I have to do that terminal business each time.

Does anyone know of a better way to get the Dropbox icon to show up properly each time?
I hope it's an easy fix.

Thanks in Advance!

**M_Mynaardt** · July 24th, 2017

Addendum:

Since I made my first post, I noticed that the Dropbox icon does not always misbehave.
Less than half the time it dose not show properly, but most of the time it does.

After a bit of experimenting, I made a bash file for getting the Dropbox icon to show properly.
I wait until the daemon message comes up telling me that the Dropbox files are synced.
Waiting for that daemon message may not be necessary. It's just me erring on the side of caution.

Anyway, here is the bash script I put together to get the Dropbox icon showing up right and proper:

Code:

# !/bin/bash
# Use this just in case the dropbox panel icon doesn't work
echo turning off dropbox to restart with panel icon &&
dropbox stop && sleep 1s &&
echo restarting starting dropbox with the panel icon &&
sleep 1s && dbus-launch dropbox start

I discovered that there needs to be a pause between stopping Dropbox and relaunching it.
At least on my computer (Samsung N150 netbook).
Which is why I put the sleep statements in this script.

Anyway, I just thought I would post this here as my own solution to this Lubuntu Dropbox aesthetics issue.
Hope someone finds it helpful.

**keyz** · August 15th, 2017

Hi there,

I had this problem ages ago and found the
dbus-launch dropbox start
solution.

The problem, as you probarly know, is that
Menu > Preferences > Default applications for LxSession > Autostart > Manual Auto started application > Add
and inserting
dbus-launch dropbox start
does not reliably launch the Dropbox app code as it always should.
It often 'mis-fires' and instead loads the cryptic icon that does not identify dropbox on the panel.

The solution, I feel, is to use an autostart start-up script that I have full control of;
/path_to/start_up.sh

I have attempted a number of solutions so far to get this start-up script working, and as yet it's not going.

As someone with a small modicum of bash scripting experience I would have though this a trival thing to do.
But not so, seemingly.

The answer, if you are on the same Lubuntu version as me, may be of some use to you also and increase system reliability.

The thread is here

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2368826

**mender27** · September 16th, 2017

I tried the "dbus-launch dropbox start" workaround, but I feel like this bug should be reported. Is it evident whether it happens on other Ubuntu flavors?