Fooling the dropbox app to use a network share

General system Newbie
1

The dropbox app refuses to use network shares and only supports unencrypted ext4.

Fortunately my home fs is ext4 so I can run the dropbox app using my home directory.

But I was wondering if there was a way to fool it into storing on my network drive.

I tried making a symlink from my network drive to my home directory but it didn’t like that.

2

Have you tried mounting it?
I don’t know if that would work, simply throwing an idea.

Edit: long ago I used Dropbox and I remember using a symlink to a folder in a local disk. But it wasn’t a network share though.

Edit2: did you see this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dropbox

3

The network share is mounted. The dropbox client detects it as a network share and refuses to use it when I try to use that as my dropbox directory.

4

Is there any error message?

5

Yeah, it tells you network shares aren’t supported

image

6

Found this, hope it helps: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=233518

Also this: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/server-hosting

7

I have no problems mounting the NFS share:
192.168.1.153:/mnt/user/MyMedia /MyMedia nfs defaults 0 0

It’s just that the dropbox client checks what the filesystem is that it’s linked to and refuses to work unless it’s unencrypted ext4.

8

Have you updated your dropbox?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dropbox#Using_Dropbox_with_non-ext4_filesystems

9

dropbox-fix2 does not work now, it’s listed as orphaned so I guess it hasn’t kept up with changes in the client.

There was this, which I’ll look into:

It is also possible to create an ext4 formatted sparse file within a non-ext4 filesystem. It can then be mounted to the desired location for the Dropbox folder.

10

Keep in mind that you’ll be syncing the image file rather than the files contained within it, which may or may not be what you’re wanting to do.

Also, if you’re creating a disk image file then you might also consider encrypting it (e.g. Encfs, Veracrypt, …).

11

Yeah after figuring out that it would be an image file it seems that it would create more hassle in my workflow than it would solve.

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