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Forum Discussion
GTFreymann
10 months agoExplorer | Level 3
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 o...
- 10 months ago
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/Apps
Good luck.
GTFreymann
Explorer | Level 3
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.
Здравко
10 months agoLegendary | Level 20
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.
- GTFreymann10 months agoExplorer | Level 3
I don't know this is difficult to understand.
I have Dropbox.com - it contains a lot of files I want to keep in the cloud. On some of my windows computers, I don't sync the entire collection as some folders are meaningless to have on every computer that I have the Dropbox client installed on.
Now I have a Debian VPS and I want share backup files on the Debian VPS with Dropbox.com but I don't want to have all of my Dropbox.com files shared down to the Debian VPS. When I run the dropbox client on the Debian box it immediately wants to sync my entire Dropbox.com file collection. I don't want any of my other dropbox.com files to sync on this particular device.
On my windows clients, I have to go into preferences, sync, selective sync and un check folders I don't want.
I don't know how you do this through the command line on Debian. I'm just looking for clarification on the command to use on the CLI interface as this is a headless VPS in the cloud.
- Здравко10 months agoLegendary | Level 20
Hi again GTFreymann,
Yes, I understand and fully agree with you. A prize "most stupid sub-commands names" should comes to the Dropbox designer has proposed that names.
All your steps you have till now are correct and matching to your intention! The only incorrect thing is the interpretation of the sub-commands names. Here "remove" means to remove something from a list of excluded folders! Do you have some folder excluded at the moment? 🧐 I suspect no. So no any result may be expected. Opposite, "add" means to add the pointed folder to the exclude list and remove from the local Dropbox folder (not opposite 😉, as you might think).
Opposite of any logic, set a checkmark in GUI Selective sync preferences is the same like removing folder from exclude list and opposite - adding folder to exclude list is the same like removing checkmark from Selective sync preferences.
Hope it's a bit more clear now.
PS: Maybe it would be easier for you just to think for "add" subcommand as "remove" and for "remove as "add".
ADD: One more clarification about the terms in use. "ignore" and "exclude" are completely different things! They have just opposite meaning; I saw you have them used interchangeably!
- GTFreymann10 months agoExplorer | Level 3
Ok, so something like this would tell the dropbox client on the debian VPS to "not" sync this folder from dropbox.com to debian, where "Apps" is a folder containing files...
./dropbox.py exclude add Apps
- GTFreymann10 months agoExplorer | Level 3
Also here is screen grab from my windows computers of the folders I have sync'd to Dropbox.com
On this PC - you can see I have some folders un-checked.
On the Debian client, I don't want *any* of these folders to sync from Dropbox.com TO the debian box. But I need to know what commands to run to tell the debian client to ignore 13 folders.
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