Mounting Dropbox in Linux

Installing dbxfs

The dbxfs officially supports Linux and Mac OS. However, it should work on any POSIX system that provides a FUSE-compatible library or has the ability to mount SMB shares. Since it is written for Python 3.5, it can installed using pip3 package manager. Refer the following guide if you haven’t installed PIP yet.

• How To Manage Python Packages Using Pip

And, install FUSE library as well.

On Debian-based systems, run the following command to install FUSE:

$ sudo apt install libfuse2

On Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install fuse

Once you installed all required dependencies, run the following command to install dbxfs utility:

$ pip3 install dbxfs

Mount Dropbox folder locally

Create a mount point to mount your dropbox folder in your local file system.

$ mkdir ~/mydropbox

Then, mount the dropbox folder locally using dbxfs utility as shown below:

$ dbxfs ~/mydropbox

You will be asked to generate an access token:

Generate access token

To generate an access token, just navigate to the URL given in the above output from your web browser and click Allow to authenticate Dropbox access. You need to log in to your dropbox account to complete authorization process.

Authorize dropbox

A new authorization code will be generated in the next screen. Copy the code and head back to your Terminal and paste it into cli-dbxfs prompt to finish the process.

You will be then asked to save the credentials for future access. Type Y or N whether you want to save or decline. And then, you need to enter a passphrase twice for the new access token.

Finally, click Y to accept “/home/username/mydropbox” as the default mount point. If you want to set different path, type N and enter the location of your choice.

All done! From now on, you can see your Dropbox folder is locally mounted in your filesystem.