Problem with Roon DB backup to Dropbox

@support,

I’m having a persistent problem backing up my Roon database to Dropbox using the Roon backup protocol.

After the initial backup, scheduled incremental backups consistently give a “stalled due to network issues” notice. I can “unstall” using the “retry” button, which resumes backup for no more than 30 seconds or so before stalling again. Eventually, the backup will complete, but it takes far too long considering that there have been very few changes to my library since the initial backup was created (only last week).

The Dropbox schedule is set to every 3 days at 4 am. I have a terabyte of Dropbox storage and there is plenty of room.

Roon Core is on a sonicTransporter-AP connected via cat-6 ethernet to a Netgear Orbi router; end points consist of:

  1. a microRendu to Mytek Brooklyn DAC
  2. 2017 i7 iMac to Schiit Magni 3 DAC
  3. and 4 Sonos zones.

The primary backup of the database is from the sT-AP SSD to its own HDD, and this occurs on a different schedule without any problems. Rebooting the core has no effect. There are no other network issues that I can detect, and Roon playback of my music library behaves flawlessly.

Hello @wkimbel87,

Thanks for contacting support, I’d be happy to take a look at this issue with you. Backups performed through Dropbox should work although they can be rate limited by the connection speed to Drobox’s servers. Can you please let me know when the last backup was attempted by your system and you noticed the failure?

I have gone ahead and enabled diagnostics mode on your account and what this will do is next time your Core is active, a set of logs will automatically be generated and uploaded to our servers for analysis. If you could let me know the date and time that the last backup failed that would be helpful in narrowing down what went wrong.

Furthermore, there are a few other things I would like for you to try, what happens if you try to perform a manual drobox backup now, does it still fail or does it work as work as expected (as in only the scheduled ones are failing or manual ones as well?). What happens if you try to send the backup not from the primary SSD but try to send it from the HDD backup, does it still fail then?

Please let me know your reply to the above questions when possible.

Thanks,
Noris

Thanks @noris, I appreciate the quick reply. If by “manual” back up you mean the “force backup now” option in Roon, yes I have tried that with the same result. I canceled the most recent back up this morning 28 June at 07:02 as I can verify from the log entry on the Roon Server Diagnostic page at sonicorbiter.com. As for trying to send the back up from the HDD rather than the SSD on the sT-AP, I don’t see how to accomplish that from within Roon. Thanks for your help!

Hello @wkimbel87,

Thanks for letting me know that timestamp. I can confirm we have received the necessary diagnostic info from your machine and I have gone ahead and started a case for you with our QA team who will be able to provide an analysis of your log files, I appreciate your patience as it reaches their review queue. As for sending the backup from the HDD instead of the SSD, that would have to be done through the Dropbox for Linux application as there is no way to select another backup folder directly in Roon, I apologize if I was not clear enough on that point. You would have to add the HDD folder as a sync folder in Dropbox and please let me know if the backups are working in that regard. I will be sure to update you once QA has finalized their report and has passed it on to me.

Thanks,
Noris

Hi @noris–Thanks, I’ll look into the Dropbox for Linux app. Oddly, however, I just checked the database backup schedule in Roon and see that a Dropbox backup was successfully completed at 05:44:44 this morning (on a 04:00 schedule). Perhaps this suggests some kind of periodic issue communicating with Dropbox servers, as you mentioned, although I never have issues with Dropbox otherwise (I use it every day for work and home). Since my problem has popped up repeatedly over a period of months after each of several “fresh” DB backups to Dropbox from the sT-AP, I would still appreciate learning what the QA folks find in the logs. Thanks again…

Hello @wkimbel87,

I have just received the report from QA regarding your case. Based on the log files, they said that it seems to indicate some network issues, specifically in the area of Name Resolution failures for Dropbox. This could indicate something possibly wrong with the DNS (Dynamic Name Services) setup, I would double check those settings in your Router. QA also wanted to confirm that there is nothing else in the network topology other than that Netgear Orbi router, can you confirm there are no other switches in between the router and the endpoints and no range extenders or additional access points are in your setup here? Please let me know when possible.

Thanks,
Noris

Hi @noris–Thanks for the report. I have checked the backup again this morning and the Dropbox backup completed again as scheduled…so maybe this is an issue on the Dropbox server end? I checked the settings in the router, and nothing seems amiss (though I am no expert in this area)–DNS address is set to come automatically from my ISP. There is a (fairly new) Trendnet unmanaged switch in my set up, but both the sonicTransporter-AP and the microRendu endpoint are connected to the Orbi router directly via cat-6. (A SONOS Boost is connected to the switch, however.) In any case, this issue has popped up before the switch was added. There is an Orbi satellite elsewhere in the house, but nothing in my music system is connected to it. Thanks!–Bill

Hello @wkimbel87,

Thanks for letting me know the rest of your network topology, I have added that as a note with your case over at QA. I would also try adding a secondary DNS and pointing it to Google’s DNS services as those rarely go down, more information on how to do that can be found here. I’m glad that the issue seems to have gone away and it may have been Dropbox’s servers, but would not be able to confirm or dismiss that theory. In any case, please do let us know if you notice additional issues and we can take another look.

Thanks,
Noris

Thanks @noris, I’ll look into Google’s DNS services. I did check my Dropbox settings just now, and noted that the upload rate option was limited to 10KB/s. I don’t know if this could have been an issue, but I reset it to unlimited just in case. (My theoretical upload rate from my ISP is ~20MB/s.)

Hello @wkimbel87,

Yes the rate limited to 10KB/s may have been a causing factor here as that rate would be very slow, especially considering when uploading a backup that is over 100MB.

It may have caused network timeouts and prevented the upload from successfully getting to Dropbox’s servers. Thanks for setting that to unlimited, I am not sure if there is anything else that we can do on our end at this moment but if you notice the issue again please let us know.

Thanks,
Noris