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Forum Discussion
Dropbox on Debian 12. But it wants to sync all of my Dropbox files down to the debian box.
I successfully installed Dropbox on a headless Debian 12 VPS. I authorized it and it works.
I am hoping to be able to backup files on the debian machine to my Dropbox account, as I have lots of room on my Dropbox.
However, when I start Dropbox it then wants to sync all of my Dropbox files down to the debian box which I don't want.
I tried some command line options using the python script:
./dropbox.py exclude remove Apps
Where "Apps" is a folder in my dropbox that I don't want to sync down to the Debian box.
I believe this resulted in the Apps folder being deleted from Dropbox!! I had to go to deleted files and restore.
So my Dropbox has all sorts of files in it... and I don't want any of those files/folders to be synced down to the Debian box. I can't figure out the syntax to use to tell dropbox on the debian box to ignore syncing specific folders that are in my dropbox.
Once I can get dropbox to stop pulling down all those files, then I just want to symlink a backup directory into the Dropbox folder on the Debian box, and have those backup files go out to Dropbox. That should be as easy just dropping files into the Dropbox folder on the debian box.
I'm sure the command is easy but now I'm afraid to play more because I don't want it to fill up my debian drive and I don't want to risk deleting files on dropbox.
Once again: Your command will work only when your current working directory is the Dropbox folder! In such a way the folder name is path too. Otherwise no.
To work in all cases you may try something like:
~/dropbox.py exclude add ~/Dropbox/AppsGood luck.
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hey GTFreymann, welcome to our Community!
As a first step, can you confirm that you've written the command with /dropbox.py or is it possible that you've adjusted the path for the Dropbox folder on the device as shown here?
Now, as for your second question in regards to symlinks, they are not generally supported, so I can't help with that, but I'd be happy to see what we can find about your first issue.
Also, we do have some Linux users, so they might be able to help and suggest or share their experience.
Let me know, and we'll take it from there!
Hi,
The path to dropbox is /root/Dropbox but I have installed dropbox in /root
I then downloaded the "dropbox.py" script and placed that in /root, made it chmod 700
This all works. I can start/stop/status and all is well.
My big issue is I don't want Dropbox to sync all of my files from Dropbox in the cloud to the Debian VPS at all. I'm just trying to sync files from Debian to/from Dropbox, and as stated, none of the commands I've tried have told debian dropbox to not sync anything else to the debian dropbox.
GTFreymann wrote:..., none of the commands I've tried have told debian dropbox to not sync anything else to the debian dropbox.
Hi GTFreymann,
Hm..🤔 You want to stop syncing particular folders down to your local folder (i.e. to add them to a list of excluded folders). Let's see...
GTFreymann wrote:...
I tried some command line options using the python script:
./dropbox.py exclude remove Apps
Where "Apps" is a folder in my dropbox that I don't want to sync ...
Ah..🤷 What are you trying actually? Do you want to add or to remove folder to exclude list (i.e. to remove something that's not there actually - by default this list is empty - initially)? 🧐
Clarify to yourself what exactly you're going to do and would be easier. 😉
Hope this helps.
