Smart Sync and aTerminal/Command Line

[stickzh]

I find the Smrt Sync interesting. But I work on a mac and most of the time from within Terminal and command line processing. What wil happen if I attempt to access a file that is not local, I guess the directory listing will show that it exists but it will be empty, or does some helper actuaky go and get it if I do that.
Guessing not 😞

[Walter · Accepted solution]

Hey there @stickzh - interesting question!

If you find (and click on) the file you'd like to access through a command via your terminal it should be downloaded locally (thus being recalled). Could you walk me through the steps you take and provide more information if that's not the case? 

Additionally, note that many processes on your machine look at files that you may have not manually opened and in order to fulfill these requests from these processes Dropbox syncs the files. Examples of this include:

• Backup services
• Antivirus
• Recently used file lists
• Third party applications that monitor files in general. 

If a file has been synced locally that you would prefer to have online-only, simply right click on it and select online-only from the Smart Sync menu.

I hope this information helps to some extent and please keep me posted on your progress.

[pierreboulez]

i'm trying to access files on a remote machine through ssh. the files there are "smart synched" meaning they're online only. i would expect dropbox to downoad the files when i try to do scp or cp the files in the terminal, but i keep getting Input/output errors and assume the files are still not downloaded from dropbox server. 

is there a way to force dropbox to download said files?

thank you

[Walter]

Hi @pierreboulez; thanks for joining our discussion here; how are you today?

I'm sorry to let you know that this won't be possible at this time as a Dropbox folder on a computer should not be accessed from a remote location or a different profile whatsoever. 

You can take a look at this discussion as well for more information on the matter.

That said, I'm always a post away if you have any more questions!

[ColombianJoker]

Did you resolve this? did you tried using "cat /some/dropbox/online/file.ext" just before trying to copy de file?