Dropbox won't start anymore

Since a while, 2 weeks, Dropbox does not startup anymore on my laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with GNOME shell.

When I run dropbox start -i in the console I get the following output.

  Starting Dropbox...Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1387, in <module>
    ret = main(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1376, in main
    result = commands[argv[i]](argv[i+1:])
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 1247, in start
    if not start_dropbox():
  File "/usr/bin/dropbox", line 731, in start_dropbox
    stderr=sys.stderr, stdout=f, close_fds=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1249, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
  OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

I already removed Dropbox and reinstalled it. What should I do to fix this?

Solution 1:

I had a similar error, and this worked:

rm -rf $HOME/.dropbox-dist
dropbox start -i

After running those commands in the terminal, let the dropbox downloader run and install. It should work immediately after it finishes.

Solution 2:

I had the same problem and found this fix

Basically, I fixed the error by reinstalling dropbox distribution with the following terminal commands:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox/.dropbox-dist
dropbox start -i

Solution 3:

Try to reinstall dropbox.

First open a terminal and type the following to remove dropbox:

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

Now type the next commands in sequence to install dropbox.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 5044912E
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main"
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropbox

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