When will online-only files work on Linux?

[edugsdf]

I need to save space on my hard drive. Online-only files would be the perfect solution, but it still does not work on linux fedora.

When will we have this solution?

[chr1s]

+1 for this feature request. I have been a paying Dropbox customer for years and have recently switched to Linux. The Dropbox user experience on Linux is 3rd class compared to Mac and Windows. Support for SmartSync is the number one thing I'm missing.

[felipeperucho]

Goog morning.

Another paying customer needing support for smart sync in Linux (Ubuntu / Elementary). Information about wether the company has plans to implement this feature or not should be nice to make a decission.

Thank you

[micoots]

Hi. Please advise the plans for better support for Linux. Paying customers are pleading for it. Thank you.

[Wynand87]

This has been ongoing for 2 years? 

2 years we have been paying for this feature and it is not available?

Please advise on the progress of this? When will Smart Sync be available?

[FrederickZh]

(Just realised my last comment didn't show up. Hmm...)

@joeytwiddle If you have a glance at the nautilus-dropbox project you'd realise it's not quite feasible to add this functionality to it. This project is basically a filesystem watcher purely in the user space and AFAIK there is no good way to 'trick' your system to show some files that don't really exist then download them on demand. Smart Sync (previously Project Infinite) works around this issue by offering a proprietary kernel module.

The best open-source alternative right now is probably Rclone. It hasn't got this feature right now, and I doubt whether such kinds of vendor-specific features will ever be their priority.

And of course the Dropbox API specifications are public and I won't be surprised if someone capable can write a new client in a few hundred hours. But anyone who does this always risks wasting tons of time on a project only to be replaced by an official one that Dropbox can roll out at any time. Not to mention that Dropbox has already got it working in macOS which is essentially BSD so it should be much easier to port it to Linux compared with starting one from scratch.

[Ljiljan]

I switched to another cloud solution for two reasons: the lack of smart sync on the Linux and the increase in the price (and  giving me 2 TB of storage, which I don't need)

[50ad5ac6ff96]

Same here: As a business advanced admin I can not currently deploy DB in a manner that helps us on linux. Having about 2TB of data available and shared forces me to support people while fiddeling around with selective sync on-per-user basis and myself for every request or work with the inefficient web interface.

For now the only thing working is to rely on nearly unmaintained OSS FUSE implementations or fiddle around with rclone/user services.

I know linux can be a hassle on the UI side, but please at least provide a fully featured service that is configurable through files/service.d or whatever. there is still no way to create transfers, share files with advanced features (like passwords) and all that "newer" stuff. No paper integration into the client, notifications not working. Same goes for multiple accounts.

Some kind of feature parity would be really nice. Right now its just a website with a sync client that does the bare minimum to exist.

[AlexSlaets]

Linux Mint 19 here.

Indeed, no smart sync for Linux in the dropbox client. Annoying to say the least. 

Selective sync is available, which is workable if dropbox storage is set up sensibly, allowing you to select appropriate chunks of archive to be used online when needed (for ex. folder with this years pictures selected, previous years deselected &c. ) 

BUT 

discovered rclone mount, which I've set up with  good caching settings and mounting dropbox as a systemd service. Seems pretty performant.  

[John S.234]

Wow - How did I miss rclone?  That sounds amazing!  I have been a fan of rsync for many years.  I'll be checking this out later today.

[GrahamLees]

Currently, Smart Sync is not available on the Linux platform.

From technical support:

There are some things that it is not possible to use when using the Dropbox client on Linux.

These are as follows:

• Camera Uploads
• Screenshot Uploads
• Two Accounts
• Custom Folder Icons for Shared Folders
• Smart Sync
• New Dropbox Desktop App

Given the increasing popularity of Linux and it's serious use in the business as well as the home environments, is it not time to escalate the requirement for a Linux client to a higher level?

Selective Sync is possible of course (with all of it's pitfalls for the unwary with volume data and minimal local disk capacity) but given the popularity of cloud based storage solutions, is it not time for Dropbox to embrace the initiative and move forward to compete more favourably with the big players in the home NAS market and «steal a march» on them?