docker-dropbox

Introduction

A container for Dropbox. Based on work by cturra and janeczku. Image based on Ubuntu 18.04.

Building

This will build an image named docker-dropbox:

./build.sh

Running

On the host

First, create a user and group for dropbox and add yourself to the dropbox group. Hopefully, UID/GID 500 is free on your system. If not you can pick a different number and modify the UID/GID in the Dockerfile.

$ sudo groupadd -g 500 dropbox
$ sudo useradd -M -s /sbin/nologin -u 500 -g 500 dropbox
$ sudo usermod -a -G dropbox $USER

Don't forget to logout and back it to get your new dropbox group permissions.

Now, create a directory that is owned by the dropbox user/group:

sudo mkdir /some/path/for/dropbox
sudo chown dropbox:dropbox /some/path/for/dropbox

Running the container

This will start the the image, name the container dropbox, and limit it to 512MB or RAM.

./run.sh /some/path/for/dropbox

Next, check the logs to link the computer with your dropbox account.

$ docker logs dropbox
...
2019-02-17 03:44:55,186 DEBG 'dropbox' stdout output:
This computer isn't linked to any Dropbox account...
2019-02-17 03:44:55,186 DEBG 'dropbox' stdout output:


2019-02-17 03:44:55,431 DEBG 'dropbox' stdout output:
Please visit https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link_nonce?nonce=SOMELONGNONCE to link this device.

Fixing file permissions

The docker container is configured to create most files readable and writable by anyone in the dropbox group. However, Dropbox sets more restrictive permissions for the directory that it syncs into, so just once you will need to fix them:

sudo chmod g+rw /some/path/to/dropbox/Dropbox

Poking around the container

If for some reason you need to poke around the container you can do that the normal Docker way:

docker exec -it dropbox /bin/bash

Further reading

https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux