Linux: Dropbox Headless

gjacobse

In setting up Dropbox on Fedora, I found that it could be installed headless.

Thought it was an interesting option, but one I've not used previously. Does anyone use this method, what are it's benefits?

scottalanmiller

Did you try it? It looks like the install is headless, not Dropbox.

gjacobse

@scottalanmiller said in Linux: Dropbox Headless:

Did you try it? It looks like the install is headless, not Dropbox.

i ran it yes,.. but seems to be cli only. so not sure how I would do that ATM.

scottalanmiller

@gjacobse said in Linux: Dropbox Headless:

@scottalanmiller said in Linux: Dropbox Headless:

Did you try it? It looks like the install is headless, not Dropbox.

i ran it yes,.. but seems to be cli only. so not sure how I would do that ATM.

Dropbox was command line only? Once installed there was no GUI? That's pretty nice, but surprising.

scottalanmiller

Obvious benefit - it's possible to use it in millions of places where there is no GUI.

gjacobse

yea,.. I'll leave it to someone more adept at the CLI to work with it.. no idea where to even start.

gjacobse

Dropbox Headless Install via command line

The Dropbox daemon works fine on all 32-bit and 64-bit Linux servers. To install, run the following command in your Linux terminal.

32-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

64-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -

Next, run the Dropbox daemon from the newly created .dropbox-dist folder.

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

If you're running Dropbox on your server for the first time, you'll be asked to copy and paste a link in a working browser to create a new account or add your server to an existing account. Once you do, your Dropbox folder will be created in your home directory. Download this Python script to control Dropbox from the command line. For easy access, put a symlink to the script anywhere in your PATH.

Obsolesce

@scottalanmiller said in Linux: Dropbox Headless:

Obvious benefit - it's possible to use it in millions of places where there is no GUI.

When you can't rsync, but have internet access... that will work nicely.

Francesco Provino

I used it for years. Be careful, the daemon sometimes suddenly stops working without any reason and without any notifications. Oh, you also need to tune some kernel parameters if you have a lot of files on dropbox.

Obsolesce

@francesco-provino said in Linux: Dropbox Headless:

I used it for years. Be careful, the daemon sometimes suddenly stops working without any reason and without any notifications. Oh, you also need to tune some kernel parameters if you have a lot of files on dropbox.

Sounds buggy.

Francesco Provino

The daemom is written in python and takes forever to rebuild the db if you restart it… I had ~1Tb in 2 millions of files. The thing is, it keeps track of the file chunks of every files… sort of joins object storage and file storage together. Very bandwith efficent, but horrible on cpu and I/O. I switched to nextcloud that lacks that feature, but it’s much faster and flexible.