Verified and Tested 04/28/15

Introduction

In this article, we will go over how to set up Dropbox via command line on a Linux Cloud Server. Dropbox is an excellent tool for making your files easy to share.

Prerequisites

-Any 32-bit or 64-bit Linux server. If you do not know if your system is 32-bit or 64-bit, follow our guide here, or if you need a secure and trusted Cloud server, consider one from Atlantic.Net.

– You will also need a Dropbox account, which you can sign up for one here.

Install Dropbox on your Linux system

Change to the root of your home directory and download the required files based on your architecture:

The command cd ~ takes you to your login directory which it typically your home directory.

32-Bit:

wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

64-Bit:

wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -

If you run the ls -a command, you will see a newly created .dropbox-dist folder.

To start the daemon, run the command:

.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

This computer isn’t linked to any Dropbox account…
Please visit https://YOUR-SPECIFIC-LINK to link this device.

Paste the link provided into your desktop web browser, and then login with your account information. Once logged in, check your terminal again. You should see the following:

This computer is now linked to Dropbox. Welcome YOUR-NAME

At this time, your files are being synced to the Dropbox folder that was created in the home folder of your current user. This can take a while, depending on how many files you have.

Now verify that your files were all synced:

ls Dropbox/

---

Next we will download the command line management script. This script requires Python, so make sure you have it installed. You can see if Python is installed with python -V

wget https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/dropbox.py -O dropbox_manager.py

chmod +x dropbox_manager.py

Run the script to review the available commands:

./dropbox_manager.py

That’s it! You can now check the status of your synced files and manage other aspects of Dropbox. Check back to learn more about hosting services from Atlantic.Net, including our HIPAA compliant database hosting.