When people have been posting to a discussion thread using (literally)
decades-old conventions for quote-and-reply, it really mucks up the read
of that discussion when a message gets posted where the person replying
decides to top-post his reply above all the others. Just sayin'....
Dick Thomas grabbed a keyboard and wrote:
> On 30 December 2012 18:26, David Guntner <davidg@akamail.net> wrote:
>>
>> Just as an asside, dropbox.com has a Debian .deb package that can be
>> downloaded from it, as well as a Python script that can be used to
>> control it from the shell.
>>
>> That might be worth looking into as well....
>
[moved to where it should have been....]
> I've found the debian repo package doesn't work, it installs but when
> run the daemon says it's install incorrectly and forwards me to the
> dropbox website. this might of changed since I last tried but it
> might be better to get it from their website
Don't know about the Debian repo (the only one I could find was for
nautilus-dropbox; and yes I know that you don't have to install Nautilus
in order to use it :-) ). Since I use Dropbox to sync files for my
other computers, I decided to install it on my Debian squeeze box and
see how things went.
I downloaded the .deb package from dropbox.com and installed:
> # dpkg -i dropbox_1.4.0_amd64.deb
> Selecting previously deselected package dropbox.
> (Reading database ... 213217 files and directories currently installed.)
> Unpacking dropbox (from dropbox_1.4.0_amd64.deb) ...
> Setting up dropbox (1.4.0) ...
> Please restart all running instances of Nautilus, or you will experience problems. i.e. nautilus --quit
> Dropbox installation successfully completed! You can start Dropbox from your applications menu.
> Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
> Processing triggers for gnome-menus ...
> Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
> Processing triggers for man-db ...
(Again, Nautilus is *not* needed in order to run Dropbox. It's just
warning you to exit and restart it if you're using it.)
So far, so good. Then I dropped back to my regular user account and
started it up....
> $ dropbox start
> Starting Dropbox...
> The Dropbox daemon is not installed!
> Run "dropbox start -i" to install the daemon
> [davidg@janet Downloads]$ dropbox start -i
> Starting Dropbox...
> Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online. Want to learn more? Head to http://www.dropbox.com/
>
> In order to use Dropbox, you must download the proprietary daemon.
> Note: python-gpgme is not installed, we will not be able to verify binary signatures. [y/n] ^C
Ok, did a cntrl-C to get out and went back to root for a second to
install the python-gpgme package, then restarted it again:
> $ dropbox start -i
> Starting Dropbox...
> Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online. Want to learn more? Head to http://www.dropbox.com/
>
> In order to use Dropbox, you must download the proprietary daemon. [y/n] y
> Downloading Dropbox... 100%
> Unpacking Dropbox... 100%
> Dropbox isn't running!
> Done!
At this point, I checked and found that in my home directory were two
directories, .dropbox and .dropbox-dist - the later being where it
installed the "proprietary daemon" and supporting libraries. The
.dropbox directory looks like it's got settings and a couple of named
UNIX sockets. Checking the .deb package that had been installed
earlier, I found that /usr/bin/dropbox is a python script that handle
manipulating (and downloading if needed) that binary. Cool beans. Ok,
so *now* to start it up!
> $ dropbox start -i
> To link this computer to a dropbox account, visit the following url:
> https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link?host_id=6ff61b77b102c00f0dc930b88fd37563
Ok, not quite. :-) I posted that URL into my web browser, which asked
me to login with my regular username/password. Once I had logged in, it
asked me for my password one more time to link the computer to the
account. It said all was now well. Tried to start it again....
> $ dropbox start -i
> To link this computer to a dropbox account, visit the following url:
> https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link?host_id=6ff61b77b102c00f0dc930b88fd37563
Hmm, I thought that was odd, given that I had already done that.
Decided to check on its status....
> $ ps -ef|egrep dropbox
> davidg 27179 1 4 11:03 ? 00:00:20 /home/davidg/.dropbox-dist/dropbox
Aha! So it *is* running, despite the odd message. Let's see if that's
actually doing anything....
> $ dropbox status
> Downloading 17 files (LAN) (1,498 kB/sec, 3 min left)
So it *is* working! Huzzah! Checked, and sure enough, there's a
Dropbox directory under my home directory....
> $ ls -la Dropbox
> total 99396
> drwx------ 7 davidg users 4096 Dec 30 11:14 ./
> drwxr-xr-x 65 davidg users 4096 Dec 30 11:25 ../
> -rw-r--r-- 1 davidg users 151902 Nov 2 19:32 Battery_Meter_V2.1.gadget
> -rw-r--r-- 1 davidg users 162459 Dec 15 23:02 Drives_Meter_V4.1.gadget
> -rw-r--r-- 1 davidg users 29 Dec 30 11:08 .dropbox
> drwxr-xr-x 2 davidg users 4096 Dec 30 11:14 .dropbox.cache/
> -rw-r--r-- 1 davidg users 246000 Jun 12 2012 Getting Started.pdf
> drwxr-xr-x 3 davidg users 4096 Dec 30 11:09 Photos/
> drwxr-xr-x 2 davidg users 4096 Dec 30 11:09 Public/
Which is, in fact what I see when I check my dropbox directory on the
Windows machines that I have linked up with it. So despite the rather
odd message with the "dropbox start -i" command (which I now realize the
-i is only needed the first time you start it up to install the daemon,
and it just gives you that link message each time). I've noted the man
page says there's a "dropbox autostart [y/n]" command available to have
it start up the daemon automatically when you login. That could be
handy. ;-)
Well, for those people who have been talking about how to get Dropbox
running on Debian, I hope they will have found my "mindless overkill"
level of detail in this message to have been of some help. <grin>
--Dave
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