Dropbox revisited
May 30, 2013 3 Comments
In a previous post I explained how I installed Kfilebox, an unofficial KDE front-end for Dropbox. However, development of Kfilebox appears to have stopped, as the original author posted the following recently on a blog:
“I have stopped working on kfilebox after some updates in dropbox. Shortly: there is no way to get recent changed files, no more access to config options, cant configure it.”
Nevertheless I continued using Kfilebox. However, after a few days the Kfilebox icon stopped appearing in the KDE System Tray, and clicking on ‘Show hidden icons’ > ‘Kfilebox’ on the Panel displayed “The Dropbox daemon isn’t running” in the pop-up menu. Also, if I clicked on the hidden Kfilebox icon and selected ‘Preferences…’ the Dropbox folder field was empty and I had to keep re-entering the location of the Dropbox folder. So I decided to uninstall Kfilebox and try using Dropbox directly with KDE. I performed the steps listed below.
- Uninstall Kfilebox:
# emerge -C kfilebox
- Remove any associated directories and files that might be left over:
# rm -rf /home/fitzcarraldo/.dropbox
# rm -rf /home/fitzcarraldo/.dropbox-dist
# rm /home/fitzcarraldo/.kde4/share/config/kfileboxrc - Install Dropbox:
# emerge dropbox
- Do not edit
/etc/conf.d/dropbox
and do not configure Gentoo to launch the Dropbox daemon at start-up (i.e. do not add/etc/init.d/dropbox
to the default runlevel). Instead configure KDE to launch the daemon when logging-in to KDE:- Kickoff > System Settings > Startup and Shutdown
- Click on ‘Autostart’ in the left pane.
- Click on the ‘Add Script…’ button on the right side of the window.
- Enter the location of the Dropbox daemon in the box in the pop-up window. I entered “
/opt/dropbox/dropboxd
” (without the quotes) in the box and clicked ‘OK’.
- Run Dropbox for the first time and configure the local installation:
- Open a Dolphin window and browse to the directory containing the daemon (
/opt/dropbox/
) and double-click ondropboxd
to launch the daemon. - The Dropbox set-up window will pop-up and it should be obvious what to do from there onwards. As I already had a Dropbox account I selected ‘I already have a Dropbox account’ and clicked ‘Next’, I then entered my e-mail address, my Dropbox password and my computer’s name in the boxes and clicked ‘Next’. I left the default free 2 GB option selected and clicked ‘Next’. I left the default set-up ‘Typical’ selected and clicked ‘Install’. I read the introductory information displayed in the next couple of windows and clicked ‘Next’. I clicked ‘Finish’ in the final ‘That’s it!’ window.
- Open a Dolphin window and browse to the directory containing the daemon (
- A Dropbox icon then appears in the System Tray on the Panel and synchronises with the Dropbox directory on the remote Dropbox server.
Now if I click on the Dropbox icon in the System Tray, the Dropbox directory window pops up. If I right-click on the icon in the System Tray, a menu pops-up with the expected Dropbox options.
So there was no need to use Kfilebox after all, as using the Dropbox daemon directly is just as user-friendly.