Dangers and pitfalls of Dropbox

[stunix*com]

I use DB on android and win regularly and tried it on TC to see if its better or quicker than samba scp sftp or any other form of file transfer.

It all works fine, Im really pleased with the work that has been done.

But, I realised that these files in ~/Dropbox are not links, they are real files, am i right?  so I panicked and made sure that ~/Dropbox was in my .xfiletool. lst just in case i sucked down > 1.5GB of stuff in to my backup.

so, next reboot, its complaining that I deleted my ~/Dropbox folder and that it cannot repopulate it.  So I mkdir ~/Dropbox. 

next thing, i see a tooltip out of the corner of my eye "you have deleted 612 files"...

yup, makes a horrifying type of sence to me.

So, my question is this, am I supposed to keep everything in my backup?
is here any other scenario where I could lose data like not using TC DB for a while then resyncing all my old stuff?


Thanks for your time.

[Rich]

Hi stunix*com

So, my question is this, am I supposed to keep everything in my backup?

You could always run a persistent  /home.

[stunix*com]

actually, to be more specific, it is a persistent /home and /opt but its on a 5Gb virtual machine. (.vmdk) so I just wouldn't want another copy of those files there.

To be honest, I can't see his working for me unless the contents of ~/Dropbox were simply links to the files rather than the files themselves.  Even if ~/Dropbox were to be stored somewhere else to avoid persistance the app would still have to use bandwith each time to repopulate.

I think I remember that you can only use one account per machine too.

[Rich]

Hi stunix*com
I don't use dropbox but I decided to do a quick search on it. According to Wiki:

The Dropbox client enables users to drop any file into a designated folder that is then synced with Dropbox's Internet service and to any other of the user's computers and devices with the Dropbox client.

Which seems to imply that the service was designed to keep files synced. Here is a link to the dropbox forum in which
other users are looking for the same thing, but seem to confirm my previous statement:
http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=36983

[coreplayer2]

On tc/linux, dropbox does not load at boot by default additionally only sync's when the app is loaded which then immediately maintains a complete copy of your dropbox locally.   However you can be selective in the files or directories you choose for a local copy to sync.      This is my preferred method actually for VM's and test machines considering my dropbox is 50GB, which is by far easier to set up than networking between VM's and PC's to transfer files.

If you have not chosen to selectively sync on a specific VM or PC then it can be reset at any time.  The important thing to remember is delete your account information from the hidden directory home/tc/.dropbox  first before deleting  any locally stored directories and files you wish not to sync with their server.  After removing the local store  home/tc/Dropbox  you can setup the account again by running the app which will ask you for your account info which it uses to create the .dropbox account info then whilst setting up you may choose the advances option to select which directories or files you would like to sync with and store locally

To recap (important to perform in this order)

delete account info on local machine  .dropbox
only now delete the local store  Dropbox
run dropbox app
setup account info
choose selective option and specify those directories to sync only
done


Caution;  failure to perform these steps in this order will delete the entire contents of all dropboxs synced on this account.   Though you can restore unintentionally deleted files using the dropbox server web interface.   I'm talking from experience here.. :|

I perform this operation often, so can vouch for it's function, just please be careful is all.

[huffpuff]

My experiences may be useful to users seeking to run dropbox on TC.

This applies to running TC on a usb flash drive with the persistence option (mydata.tgz) running and a folder on the drive symlinked into the home directory for saving stuff directly to the stick.

My problem began with the failure to store the computer link by dropbox upon reboot which required the full wizard setup to be performed each time I booted the system. Eventually I abandoned the TC extension and in desperation unpacked the text-based version of dropbox from the server into .dropbox-dist in the home directory. Despite this it still would not preserve the link between computer and dropbox server and I would continually have to run the wizard setup at each boot.

At this point I began moving everything out of the home directory and physically onto the stick (.dropbox, .dropbox-dist, Dropbox) and creating symlinks into the home directory.

This is when I encountered the problem - the .dropbox folder refused to copy certain files due to special permissions. Could it be, I wondered, that the linking data is stored in secure files within this directory by dropbox and that these files are not stored during TC's backup procedure of mydata.tgz due to a permissions issue?

I cannot answer that question definitively. But having skipped the files and continuing with the copying of the .dropbox folder to the stick the subsequent setup process was now making any changes directly to the stick via the symlink in the home directory.

Now when the system saves and closes it preserves only the symlinks and all changes are made directly to the relevant folders on the drive. And no more wizard setup upon reboot & save.

I believe python is the main dependency but otherwise you can proceed with a text-based install of dropbox in the following way (provided tar and wget are loaded in your system):

Code: [Select]

wget -O dropbox.tar.gz "http://www.dropbox.com/download/?plat=lnx.x86"

tar -xvzf dropbox.tar.gz

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd


This btw is for the 32-bit version.

The last command starts the wizard setup after which the folders .dropbox, .dropbox-dist, and Dropbox can be copied to a physical location on the drive, deleted from your home directory and symlinked.

The '~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd' can also be symlinked to your path and 'dropboxd &' added to your .setbackground file or in a file in your .X.d folder to start at boot.

Hope this helps and happy dropboxing!