Forum Discussion

Jeff_S1's avatar
Jeff_S1
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago

sync only one folder on linux

I have a huge dropbox business account, and I'd like to sync one "deep" folder on a linux client.  This folder is deep in the folder hierarchy, so for example the folder: "folder 1/folder 2/folder 3"...
desktop
sync
Concerned Citizen's avatar
Concerned Citizen
Helpful | Level 6
4 years ago

I would suggest this is a common use case and should be treated as a mainstream use of the product.  I'm setting up a Minecraft server on Digital Ocean and just assumed it'd be easy to use Dropbox in this fashion.  All I wanted to do was basically sync a directory like Games/Minecraft to this droplet, without having to first sync the entire service (which is prohibitively large for this VM).  We need an --exclude * and then --include foo type of mechanism.

sydsyd's avatar
sydsyd
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago

Just wondering if this question was ever resolved/fixed.

I too would like to only have one folder, on the top level, of an account synced on my Linux headless server without having to have the whole account synced first before I can exclude all other folders.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey sydsyd, have you tried pausing syncing and then resuming it after having excluded the folders you don't want to be synced to your device?

    • sydsyd's avatar
      sydsyd
      Helpful | Level 5
      3 years ago

      Hi Walter - I've found another workaround which is to just share a specific folder with another Dropbox.

      This avoids syncing and excluding.

      But pausing the sync after setting up the link was going to be my next step.

      I think all of this can be avoided if there was a config file that could be read by the dropbox linux daemon to not sync specific folders in a list.

      • Walter's avatar
        Walter
        Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
        3 years ago

        Glad to hear you got this sorted in the end and thanks for your feedback too sydsyd - it's been noted in our system.

         

        Please let us know if you have anything else to add. 

    • Robert T.26's avatar
      Robert T.26
      Explorer | Level 4
      3 years ago

      Tried 'Pause Syncing'.

      Tried limiting download bandwidth to 1.0kb.

      Still hard disk is full and dropbox knows it is full.

      Will not work on removing excluded folders and files first!

      Need a way to prioritize the exclude operations over syncing new files.

       

       

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