Firejail: dropbox doesn't seem to update itself when firejailed

[laurento]

I've noticed dropbox doesn't update itself while running under firejail. The icon on the tray keeps the blue spinning emblem and the contextual menu the "upgrading..." entry.

If I instead run the dropbox application without using firejail everything works as expected. I've tried to look at the dropbox log messages and to run firejail in debug mode but I didn't see anything strange. Please let me know if I can provide any additional information.

[Fred-Barclay]

Hi @laurento
What version of firejail, and what Linux distro, are you running?

I've tried replicating this myself on Ubuntu 17.10, but I can't figure out how to force dropbox to install an old version so I can try updating. 🙁

[laurento]

Since I opened the issue here I ran dropbox out the jail to let it upgrade. My current version is v37.4.29 and it has the same issue. I'm running debian testing.

[laurento]

I'm using firejail-0.9.52 and dropbox-41.4.80 right now and the issue seems to be gone. I propose to close this bug report.

[Fred-Barclay]

Closing, thanks!

[laurento]

Aaarg! Brand new installation firajail-0.9.4 on Debian Buster (testing) same issue :(

Shall we reopen this issue?

[Fred-Barclay]

Yep, reopening!

@laurento please kill dropbox, download https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netblue30/firejail/master/contrib/jail_prober.py, and run
python3 jail_prober.py dropbox (you may need to change the dropbox executable path or name -- I don't know what it is :smile: ). Then follow the prompts in the terminal -- enter 'y' if dropbox works correctly and 'n' if it doesn't. Paste the output back here.

(jail_prober.py is an experimental script I wrote -- it works on my end but apologies in advance if it doesn't work for you!).

[chiraag-nataraj]

Is this still an issue @laurento?

[laurento]

Is this still an issue @laurento?

Well, last time I've tried (few months ago) the issue was still there. However, I'm now using dropbox via flatpak so I solved using a different kind of confinement :)

[chiraag-nataraj]

I guess I'll close this for now then - we can always re-open if it's an issue and they wan to stick with firejail :D

[chiraag-nataraj]

Haha I'll re-open it myself since I'm running into the same issue right now :joy:

[chiraag-nataraj]

Never mind. I restarted it after it kept spinning and now it says "up to date"...:man_shrugging:

[chiraag-nataraj]

Sorry for the noise. I figured out that it didn't actually update.

The most annoying thing is that I need to let it sit there a little while each time for it to figure out it needs to update (I don't think there's a way I can manually force an update...).

[chiraag-nataraj]

Workaround: Use the control script here and run the update operation. If it works, I'll add the workaround label and close this again :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[edit] Unfortunately, it did not work.

[edit2] Ah, okay. The issue is the is_dropbox_valid() function in the Python script that checks to make sure the download is able to run. I'm going to try hacking the script so it doesn't try to do that...

[chiraag-nataraj]

Here's the full workaround:

1. Download this script and put it somewhere you can easily access _within the sandbox_.
2. Edit the is_dropbox_valid() function (starts at line 254 I believe) to always return True (you don't even need to do much, just ensure that's the first line of the function and you don't even need to touch the rest).
3. Start a sandboxed dropboxd instance.
4. Now, run firejail --join=dropboxd ~/path/to/dropbox.py update
5. This should update the binary properly.

I just tested this with a firejail-ed dropboxd and it updated properly! I'm going to close this for now and tag it with the workaround label as stated earlier.