sync only one folder on linux

[Jeff_S1]

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" is the ONLY one I want downloaded to the linux client.

I tried: dropbox.py exclude add * ; dropbox.py exclude remove 'folder 1/folder 2/folder 3'

and various permutations of that, but I always still end up with:

dropbox.py exclude list
Excluded:
folder 1

What's the magical set of commands I need to issue to exclude everything - except one deep folder?

Or, do I need to create local paths for this deep folder on the client first?

[Walter]

Hey @Jeff_S1; welcome aboard and thanks for using Dropbox!

Just to make sure we're on the same page, can you please let me know if you're fully synced on this machine by running the status command?

Keep us posted!

[Jeff_S1]

No, I have not fully synced.  that would take more than 10TB of data, of which I only need about 600GB (the one deep folder).  I'm trying to avoid that huge, unneeded sync.  So, this is a new, empty machine, that I've installed dropbox.py and activated - but has not synced.

[Здравко]

Hi @Jeff_S1,

Seems, you are thinking in exactly opposite way instead of what "Selective Sync" implementation assumes to. 🙂 As seems you have noticed (to some extent) that using command (or GUI) folder tend to be excluded, not included, so how exactly you can add a subfolder in a missing (excluded) folder?! 🧐 Try to do the same trick using GUI (not necessary on Linux). Do you able? 🙄 What's the problem? 😉 Using the command prompt is the same! Execute on command line the equivalent things you are doing on GUI. Unchecking particular folder means adding to "exclude list" and checking the same folder means removing from "exclude list". Take in mind that in GUI when you set check mark to a nested folder all containing folders receive check mark too. In console you have to do this by hand! This is NOT done by the control script for you! This could be object of improvements (not to say it's a bug). When adding folders you have to add nested folders from outermost to innermost folder... Or better opposite, instead of exclude all and after that to try add some of them, just exclude folders you don't want to be in sync locally. Nothing special, the same commands (even one less) in right order. 😉

Hope this gives right direction.

[Jeff_S1]

Ahh, OK.  This makes sense.  So, I need to include folder 1.  Then exclude all children of folder 1.  Something like:

dropbox.py exclude remove ~/Dropbox/folder 1

dropbox.py exclude add    ~/Dropbox/folder 1/*

dropbox.py exclude remove ~/Dropbox/folder 1/folder 2

dropbox.py exclude add    ~/Dropbox/folder 1/folder 2/*

dropbox.py exclude remove ~/Dropbox/folder 1/folder 2/folder 3

I'll give that a try...

[jamespi]

Did you get this to work? I have a problem where I can't sync the single folder I want, because despite excluding all the other folders, dropbox still wants to download all of them first before then deleting the excluded ones. This doesn't work because my hard drive is not big enough to sync the entire dropbox folder.

I can't find a way to set up the exclude list in advance before syncing, and having it not even attempt to download the excluded folders. You mention having a 10TB dropbox, so I imagine this is a problem you would run into as well, unless I'm just being dumb somehow.

[Jay]

Hi @jamespi, thanks for your message. I'd recommend contacting the support team to look into this matter in more detail.

[r3cgm]

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.