Deleting files and folders in Dropbox does not work

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version Debian 12
Webmin version 2.202
Virtualmin version 7.30.4 Pro
Webserver version Apache
Related packages SUGGESTED

Hi

I backup domains to Dropbox and to AWS S3 and the backup to both locations goes without problems, but deleting old backups and folders does not work in Dropbox, while there are no issues about that in AWS.

Does anyone have any clues about how to handle this? For the moment I delete them manually from Dropbox.

The error is : Deleting backups from local file /usr/share/webmin/virtual-server/dropbox:///Backup/Virtualmin/backup-barr/differential/%Y-%m-%d matching .*-Differential older than 7 days …
… failed to list Dropbox files : HTTP/1.0 409 Conflict

Try a more conventional name for the backup as I’m not sure /%Y-%m-%d will work
I use /Full-%d-%m-%Y and a different name for the differential so try add a name prefix and see if it fixes it.
Also that could be a waning message, are there older the 7 day backups.

Thanks, I will try, but it works in AWS so why should it be different in Dropbox?

Perhaps because Dropbox is not AWS?
though really you should concentrate on the error message

HTTP/1.0 409 Conflict
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/409

Let’s see if ChatGPT is my friend. I asked

What is wrong with this?%Y-%m-%d-%T

and had the below answer

The issue is with the %Tspecifier. In many implementations,%Texpands to the time in the formatHH:MM:SS, which includes colons. These colons can cause conflicts in file naming conventions for some systems or APIs, such as Dropbox. If you need the time component, consider using %H-%M-%S instead, or remove the time part if it isn’t necessary.

When writing files, the system might accept the colons produced by %T because the file creation process isn’t as strict about special characters, or it properly encodes them. However, the deletion process typically involves listing files using pattern matching. In that context, the colons can interfere with the matching logic or even be interpreted as reserved characters by the API, resulting in a conflict error when attempting to list or delete those files

So now I have changed to %H-%M-%S I’ll let you know the outcome.

I guess you are right, and then it is something wrong with Virtualmins handling of Dropbox. The full error message is

Deleting backups from local file /usr/share/webmin/virtual-server/dropbox:///Backup/Virtualmin/Dolibarr-Bjar/Differential/%Y/%m/%d matching .-.-.* older than 1 days …

… failed to list Dropbox files : HTTP/1.0 409 Conflict

It can’t even list the Dropbox files and then it is outside my control. I will have to delete them manually from Dropbox even in the future.

This didn’t help.

As a Pro subscriber I got an answer from Ilia, and it solved the problem

I highly doubt that it is realistically possible, or at the very least would be quite difficult for us, to make old backups cleaning work for %Y/%m/%d . I would highly recommend using %Y-%m-%d-%H:%M instead and giving it another try.

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