{"id":4128,"date":"2016-06-06T10:42:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T15:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/?p=4128"},"modified":"2016-10-07T03:09:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T08:09:13","slug":"dropbox-with-freebsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/dropbox-with-freebsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropbox on FreeBSD"},"content":{"rendered":"

I put my personal websites on a FreeBSD server. One of my websites is a photo album, which I want to read the content from a Dropbox. That Dropbox primarily runs on Mac, iPhone and iPad. I was trying to explore the possibilities to set up a Dropbox on FreeBSD. Since Dropbox doesn’t support FreeBSD officially, I need to use 3rd party tools, most of them are basically based on the Dropbox developer API.<\/p>\n

So I have tried several 3rd party tools, as you expect, none of them works. The primary problem is the synchronization, i.e., if my wife adds or deletes a photo on the Dropbox, I expect that the Dropbox folder on FreeBSD will get updated as well. Another problem is the speed. Looks like the Dropbox API is not as fast comparing to its own native application. On the same network, it took few hours to download the content (around 1GB of jpeg files) from Dropbox on FreeBSD, versus 10 minutes on a Mac\/Windows\/Linux machine using the native application.<\/p>\n

So I came up few alternative solutions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Hosting my website on CentOS Linux. Since Dropbox supports Linux, I can easily read the Dropbox without any problem.<\/li>\n
  2. Push the Dropbox content from Mac\/Linux to FreeBSD using Rsync periodically (e.g., every 5 mins, hourly etc). That way FreeBSD will have access the Dropbox files.<\/li>\n
  3. Set up a NFS service on a Linux box with access to Dropbox, and let the FreeBSD to mount the corresponding NFS share. This solution is okay if both machines are on the same network. It may raise some security concerns if both machines are connected via the public.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Another solution I think it may work is to install the Dropbox native application on FreeBSD. FreeBSD supports running Linux application via Linux emulation. Back in the old days (FreeBSD 8), it was pretty easy to include the Linux support on FreeBSD (one click in the sysinstall). Since the recent releases, they’ve made it harder because not many people wants to run Linux binary on FreeBSD. Based on my previous experience, I think it should work on the latest FreeBSD, but it may require some works.<\/p>\n

    Another crazy idea will be running Dropbox with Wine on FreeBSD. But this goes way too far from my original purpose, and I am not a big fan of Wine because it adds too many libraries to the system.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I put my personal websites on a FreeBSD server. One of my websites is a photo album, which I want to read the content from a Dropbox. That Dropbox primarily Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,146,7,144,6,69],"tags":[169,171],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support","category-everyday-computer-problem","category-freebsd","category-sever-problem","category-technology","category-troubleshooting-technology","tag-dropbox","tag-freebsd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1sqzr-14A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4542,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/centos-7-dracut-initqueue-timeout\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":0},"title":"CentOS 7 – dracut-initqueue timeout","author":"Derrick","date":"January 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I received a Christmas gift from the RHEL 7 \/ CentOS 7 \/ Linux kernel team today. After my system got updated to the new kernel (3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64), my system gave me few surprises. As a sys-admin, I don't want to see any surprise. What I really want is a working\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2181,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/freebsd-updateinstalling-updates-install-usrsrcliblibcgenlibc_dlopen-c-no-such-file-or-directory\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":1},"title":"[FreeBSD-update]Installing updates…install: \/\/\/usr\/src\/lib\/libc\/gen\/libc_dlopen.c: No such file or directory","author":"Derrick","date":"December 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When I tried to upgrade my FreeBSD system today, I received a last minute Christmas gift from the FreeBSD team. :-) #sudo freebsd-update fetch Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 4 mirrors found. Fetching metadata signature for 8.2-RELEASE from update4.FreeBSD.org... done. Fetching metadata index... done. Inspecting system... done. Preparing to download files...\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2616,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/upgrade-freebsd-8-to-9\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":2},"title":"How to Upgrade FreeBSD from 8 to 9","author":"Derrick","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Upgrading FreeBSD is very easy. Thanks for the simple architecture design and the disconnection between the kernel and the applications (ports), the whole process takes around 15 to 45 minutes. The coolest thing is that the system down time is very short. In my case, the down time was only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2752,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/freebsd-samba-does-not-start-after-updating-to-3-5-14\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":3},"title":"[FreeBSD] Samba does not start after updating to 3.5.14","author":"Derrick","date":"April 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"[ad#adbrite] After I updated my Samba to 3.5.14 on my FreeBSD box today, it stopped working. I couldn't connect to the Samba server from my Windows clients. Initially, I thought it was the memory cache issues, and I thought the problem would be solved by rebooting both machines. Unfortunately, it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/computer-problem.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3380,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/freebsdmount-devda0p2-rw-mount-of-denied-filesystem-is-not-clean-run-fsck-forced-mount-will-invalidate-journal-contents-operation-not-permitted\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":4},"title":"[FreeBSD]mount: \/dev\/da0p2: R\/W mount of \/ denied. Filesystem is not clean – run fsck. Forced mount will invalidate journal contents: Operation not permitted","author":"Derrick","date":"January 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"When I tried to mount a hard drive on FreeBSD today, I got the following error message. sudo mount -t ufs \/dev\/da0p2 \/mnt\/ mount: \/dev\/da0p2: R\/W mount of \/ denied. Filesystem is not clean - run fsck. Forced mount will invalidate journal contents: Operation not permitted Here is how to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":730,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/fetch-ftpftp-freebsd-orgpubfreebsdportsdistfilesngx-fancyindex-0-2-2-tar-bz2-file-unavailable-e-g-file-not-found-no-access\/","url_meta":{"origin":4128,"position":5},"title":"fetch: ftp:\/\/ftp.FreeBSD.org\/pub\/FreeBSD\/ports\/distfiles\/ngx-fancyindex-0.2.2.tar.bz2: File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)","author":"Derrick","date":"June 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I tried to run the upgrade my nginx on my FreeBSD box, and I received the following message: ===> Vulnerability check disabled, database not found ===> License accepted by the user ===> Found saved configuration for nginx-0.7.66 => ngx-fancyindex-0.2.2.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist in \/usr\/ports\/distfiles\/. => Attempting to fetch\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Dropbox_logo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4128"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4189,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions\/4189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}