Dropbox

Is there a way to have dropbox synchronization on the Pi (debian)? I'd like to have a selective folder synchronization option so the desktop client is probably a must.

Never gonna work. Dropbox for Linux only runs on x86 so won't work on Raspi's ARM CPU.

You could make a complex system in which you install Dropbox on a Windows machine, and mount the Dropbox folder as a Samba share so you can access the "remote-remote" folder on the Pi.

dropdav

(It'll cost you though.)

Might be too early for dropbox to set in.. but who knows ask them whether they can provide support now.

Might be too early for dropbox to set in.. but who knows ask them whether they can provide support now.

Nice idea, but people have been asking (and voting) for a Dropbox Linux ARM client for many many years, but all the requests fall on deaf ears
https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/358/linux-arm-support

But my armv6 android phone has dropbox.

But my armv6 android phone has dropbox.

Yup https://www.dropbox.com/android

But the mobile Dropbox clients work very differently to the desktop Dropbox clients.

[abishur]

But my armv6 android phone has dropbox.

Yep, your android OS can do something that a bare Linux OS cannot do. I know at the end of the day, Android is just a fancy GUI and assorted ins and outs on top of linux, but it really does make a difference. Just because something runs on one doesn't mean instant compatibility for the other.

Would the web client not work? It wouldn't be perfect but you could get files from A to B with reasonable speed.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7536 suggests owncloud, which looks pretty good. I'm about to try it out now

Look up lftp - I want this capability and have my own FTP space (as I suspect many here do as well). Don't know much about it yet but that seems to do what you want and sync locally with a remote.

If you are looking for a file backup/restore service, Duplicity (http://duplicity.nongnu.org/) is available for the RPi by using the command
sudo apt-get duplicity

Duplicity is the built-in backup solution used by Ubuntu. It can backup over ssh/scp, samba, rsync, ftp, HSI, WebDAV, Tahoe-LAFS, and Amazon S3.

I have used it for years (under the name deja-dup) to backup daily to a Samba drive and it is rock-solid.

I was just thinking about this, although the other services sound good, I think I could have a good simple solution (which will hopefully work for my situation where the RPi does not have internet access (due to company proxy) but does have network, so I can use through VNC).

1. Set up a SMB shared drive on rpi, so it can be viewed from windows PC.
2. Setup up file sync software (i.e. AllwaySync) to mirror these files to a sub-directory in windows which is within dropbox...

Bingo...end up with dropbox backup of files and easy way to drop files on the RPi. If I set up another SD-card with the same share, it'll keep both cards synced too.

Just need to work out how to share a directory on the RPi now...
As, bredman has pointed out before...
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_NAS
I feel may be my friend here.

Not Dropbox but you can follow the instructions here to mount box.com as a network drive on your R-pi.

http://linuxfordummies.org/mount-your-box-com-account-in-linux/

Not Dropbox but you can follow the instructions here to mount box.com as a network drive on your R-pi.
http://linuxfordummies.org/mount-your-box-com-account-in-linux/

There's also a WebDAV addon available for Dropbox http://dropdav.com/ which I guess would work in the same way.

Easiest would be to use one of the ask or the raw REST API to Push,pull files from Dropbox. Use the python sdk for example: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/sdk

Yup. But using the SDK effectively gives you a FTP-like interface, which isn't what people expect when they ask for a Dropbox client - they want the standard 2-way automatic file synchronization (with speedy delta-transfers) that Dropbox on the desktop (or headless x86 Linux) offers

There is another possibility, if you want to access your Dropbox (and, indeed, other "cloud" storage) from your Pi without actually mirroring the files to your local storage: I just found out about a Web service called Otixo, which aims to provide a single "file manager" front-end for accessing your "cloud storage" (Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, Box.net, etc.).

What particularly interests me with Otixo, is that it also provides access to your files on these services as a WebDAV share. I don't know about Debian, but in the Arch "extra" repository, there's a filesystem driver called davfs (named "davfs2" for installation), which allows you to mount a WebDAV share directly into the Pi's filesystem.

In other words: as long as you have an Otixo account (with your desired "cloud storage" services added) and a working Internet connection on the Pi, with one "mount" command you could have access to your Dropbox, etc. without needing the files mirrored locally.

I haven't had time to try it yet, but I think I have a blog post in the offing if it works

Yup. But using the SDK effectively gives you a FTP-like interface, which isn't what people expect when they ask for a Dropbox client - they want the standard 2-way automatic file synchronization (with speedy delta-transfers) that Dropbox on the desktop (or headless x86 Linux) offers

Unless you use the sdk to build exactly that. Easy enough to do in Node.js

What particularly interests me with Otixo, is that it also provides access to your files on these services as a WebDAV share. I don't know about Debian, but in the Arch "extra" repository, there's a filesystem driver called davfs (named "davfs2" for installation), which allows you to mount a WebDAV share directly into the Pi's filesystem.

Which is exactly what the DropDAV I linked to earlier does. But Otixo looks cheaper than DropDAV - I wonder exactly how long Otixo will be able to stay "free" for?

Yup. But using the SDK effectively gives you a FTP-like interface, which isn't what people expect when they ask for a Dropbox client - they want the standard 2-way automatic file synchronization (with speedy delta-transfers) that Dropbox on the desktop (or headless x86 Linux) offers

Unless you use the sdk to build exactly that. Easy enough to do in Node.js

The Dropbox SDK only uploads/downloads entire files, not file-deltas. And I'd love to hear how a server-side Node.js script is supposed to automatically spot when a file on your Raspi has changed?

Quite easily with any of the node wrappers around FAM or inotify. I am not sure if you're making a distinction between the pi and 'server-side' but the app would run on the rpi. It's very unlikely any of my rpi will be running anything but headless.

Also the Dropbox API does deltas: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/api#delta

Ah, that's why I was getting confused. Never used Node.js myself so thought it could only run on webservers, didn't realise you could run it "locally" too

Also the Dropbox API does deltas

Yes, but that's change-deltas, not file-deltas. If you only change 1KB in a 50MB file, the traditional Dropbox desktop clients only need to transfer the small part of the file that actually changed, but using the Dropbox API you have to transfer the whole 50MB all over again.

Gotcha. Wouldn't really affect my use case, upload new sensor log payload to a specific directory on Dropbox then delete on the rpi but it would make for a slightly ineffective sync client. Could be fine for many use cases though.

It's important to note that Dropbox claims to create hashes on every 4MB of each file. Which means that if your file are on average less than 4MB, it wouldn't make a difference that you can't use change deltas.