How can I use Dropbox to back up arbitrary folders?

Seph Reed

2/1/23, 4:08 PM

Symlinks are no longer followed in dropbox, so this answer won't help: How can I make dropbox back up folders in my Home Folder like Music?

I have photos folder, I'm on Ubuntu, I want to back up my photos. I don't want to organize my entire system around the drop box folder. Further, my dropbox folder is on a different HD than my photos are.

What I'd like to do is tell dropbox that the photos folder should also be uploaded, and it's okay to have more than one folder being backed up.

How can I do this?

0 + 0

dropbox

jtessier72

2/1/23, 4:13 PM

Does it have to be backed up the moment you add a new photo, or could you do a cron job to backup? Maybe rclone? https://rclone.org/dropbox/

Seph Reed

2/1/23, 4:15 PM

If rclone uses disk space, that won't work. My OS is on a much smaller hard drive than the data I'm trying to back up... but reading this it looks like back-ups go directly to the server. Can you confirm?

jtessier72

2/1/23, 4:22 PM

With rclone you can push your photos to Dropbox, or any other remote service. It is up to you if you allow the dropbox desktop client to sync your photos back to you. You can exclude that using selective sync. Have a look at the link - the first part shows setup and pushing to a remote.

Seph Reed

2/1/23, 4:26 PM

Ah. So it'll be one way back ups, but no sync. Not exactly great for sharing a project between multiple computers... but better than nothing.

jtessier72

2/1/23, 4:43 PM

You can do copy or sync in either direction with rclone. You mentioned backup, so I mentioned push.

Score:2

Ubuntu

vanadium

2/1/23, 4:54 PM

Annoying, indeed, where Dropbox, for an unknown reason, deliberately decided to break linux symlinks. You can still work around by using mount --bind instead. Far less convenient, because you need to be superuser to be able to do this.

The following example of a line in /etc/fstab would automatically mount --bind a folder Photos in user's home folder to a similarly named folder in the Dropbox folder during startup:

/home/user/Photos /home/user/Dropbox/Photos none bind,x-gvfs-hide 0 0

The x-gvfs-hide option prevents the mount from being shown in the left pane of your file manager

0 + 0

Seph Reed

2/1/23, 5:05 PM

This makes sense. Basically the same as symlink... but kind of better. I understood the issue with syncing up a file, then overwriting the symlink with the file on sync-down. Does this avoid that? It seems like it may.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: How can I use Dropbox to back up arbitrary folders?

TH: ฉันจะใช้ Dropbox เพื่อสำรองข้อมูลโฟลเดอร์ตามอำเภอใจได้อย่างไร

RO: Cum pot folosi Dropbox pentru a face copii de rezervă ale dosarelor arbitrare?

RU: Как я могу использовать Dropbox для резервного копирования произвольных папок?

VI: Làm cách nào tôi có thể sử dụng Dropbox để sao lưu các thư mục tùy ý?

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.