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zephyr707's avatar
zephyr707
Helpful | Level 7
7 years ago
Solved

Best practices for using symlinks (symbolic links)

Hi there, I use dropbox on linux with symlinks, but am not sure which is the best/preferred way to use them. Is there a best practice for using this type of configuration? Currently I use symlink...
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desktop
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sync
  • Daphne's avatar
    Daphne
    7 years ago
    Hey there zephyr707,
     
    I would strongly recommend sticking with the current configuration you currently have, which would be having the actual files in the Dropbox folder and having your symlinks in the home directory. In this case, it wouldn’t have any affect on the files syncing as the actual files are within the Dropbox folder.
     
    Issues occur with syncing when the files are located elsewhere and the symlink is within the Dropbox folder instead. This can cause performance issues and high CPU usage when trying to sync the files. In some cases, the desktop app may even just sync the symlink file itself and not the referenced file. This will mean the actual file won’t be synced to your Dropbox account so you wont be able to access the actual file via the web or other devices your account syncs to.
     
    Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions - Thanks!
TLA2c's avatar
TLA2c
New member | Level 2
6 years ago
Agree, am in exact same boat - I have several things I want to keep backed up / off site, where the actual data directory can't be under my user profile / dropbox folder. Symlinks allowed this to work perfectly until blocked.
jsparks's avatar
jsparks
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago

I'm currently doing an initial sync with Backblaze.  Will post here how my experience is after I have a chance to kick the tires a bit.  No symlink support, but it backs up everything with unlimited storage and allows you to create links to send other people to download.  I suspect that will be enough to satisfy what I mostly need it for.

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