Nextcloud 18 - There is the way to sync Dropbox with Nextcloud?

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1

Hello,

I just want to know if there is the solution for sync Dropbox on Nextcloud 18 to sync automaticaly when I put a file on my Dropbox account ?!

Currently I do it by hand and it’s very boring…

Thanks you very much

2

Seems like they might have had this before - https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/7810 - but it was removed. Then there were extra app developed but it’s no longer maintained and doesn’t seem to work (for me at least) in v17 - https://github.com/DJaeger/files_external_dropbox/

I think a volunteer would need to step up BUT I would recommend chiming in on actual issue discussion. The above was closed for some reason, maybe add a new one “Re-implement support for Dropbox external storage”. If there are many up votes then maybe the core team may take it seriously?

3

if you just want to sync some folders you may want to look at rclone.org

4

Yes it’s a good idea !!
You think i should make a new topic on this forum ?

5

Thanks you but i don’t really know how it works… at least i haven’t figured out how to do it :frowning:
Maybe you could help me?

6

To be honest I’m not sure the best option but I’m guessing that it may get more maintainer notice as a new issue on the main github repo: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/

Maybe that plus a new forum topic?

More (recent - this Jan) discussion on rclone with Nextcloud here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/ettqa0/rclone_nc_app_good_idea_or_do_i_just_not/

7

i asume you have dropbox folder that you want to sync to nextcloud folder at /var/www/nextcloud/data/maouu/files/Dropbox.

  • you install rclone following: Install
  • you run rclone config following https://rclone.org/dropbox/
  • you test your config running rclone ls dropbox:folder
  • you now can run rclone sync /var/www/nextcloud/data/maouu/files/Dropbox dropbox:folder or rclone sync dropbox:folder /var/www/nextcloud/data/maouu/files/Dropbox
    read rclone sync and test what happens when you delete files in the dropbox and nextcloud folder.
  • create a cronjob to run the rclone command on a regular base.

you should test this with test data in test folders. :wink:

ok?

8

This should probably be done as the http user? And isn’t it neccessary to run sudo -u http occ files:scan maouu/files/Dropbox afterwards?

9

@user9812378 yes. sorry. forgot about that.

11

Sorry but I don’t understand :worried:

12

Thanks you very much! I’ll try that :grin:

13

It means that you need to run the above commands as the http user. The webserver is often run as a different user, and therefore your regular user does (at least should) not have access to the nextcloud files. Prefix the commands with sudo -u http (or whatever your webserver user is called) to run them as a different user.

Also you need to make sure that the files downloaded by rclone are readable by the webserver user, so make sure that either user or group is http. You can probably run the rclone commands with sudo -u http as well to be sure.

And the last step is to run sudo -u http occ files:scan maouu/files/Dropbox afterwards, because you need to inform that you manually added some files to nextcloud’s filesystem.

14

The only way that worked out for me on Nextcloudpi 18 and Raspberrypi 3+ was with rclone. rclone is quite powerful and relatively easy to use (i’m also not an expert).

The procedure on getting access to Dropox was explained alrady above.

In my case i didn’t actually want to have all the Dropbox files on my Raspberrypi, so i decided to just mount the Dropbox as a virtual drive. This is very well explained here:
https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/
In my case i had to use the command with the flag --allow-other, so it would be:
rclone mount --daemon --allow-other remote:path/to/files /path/to/local/mount to work properly.
The local path i added to a “Local” external drive in Nextcloud (Settings --> External Drive), et voilà. See also here:
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/19/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage_configuration_gui.html

My Nextcloud clients on differen computers/laptops can sync with my Raspberrypi without the need of copying the files on the Raspberry :slight_smile:
The question is only, how long will it work, until Dropbox changes again something in their access mode …

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