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Currently, there in no version of Dropbox for ARM Linux variants, there is an article here

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/358/linux-arm-support

I've use Cubby, Google Drive, DropBox, Wuala, SpiderOak and probably a few others, but haven't found anything which supports ARM Linux.

I'm thinking of using Mercurial and syncing using a repository.

It would be extremely useful to be able to have files in a tools cubby - then I could download on a Mac or PC and drop in that folder and then have it available on the device.

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  • 1
    If you're talking big files, mercurial is not a good choice.
    – Jivings
    Jul 14, 2012 at 8:32
  • 1
    You may want to check this out mitchtech.net/dropbox-on-raspberry-pi-via-sshfs
    – Steve Robillard
    Jul 14, 2012 at 8:34
  • So you want the pi to be a server to sync you files with? Or do you want to sync the files from the internet (and therefore to all PCs including the pi)?
    – keiki
    Jul 27, 2012 at 16:36
  • @otakun85 I want to have a dropbox or cubby which I can put things in and get things out from multiple machines. So I can drop a file in a dropbox at work on a PC and it's on my Mac, my RPi, etc whenever I sit at those. Whether it triggers an action, like sabnzbd to download or just a thing like a wiki on a stick or whatever.
    – Cade Roux
    Jul 27, 2012 at 17:02

11 Answers 11

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A quick solution would be to use rsync, which makes a local directory look identical to a remote one. Unlike DropBox, you would just have to perform the sync operation manually when you wanted things up to date.

Unlike a version control system like Mercurial, rsync won't keep history or backups, so it is very easy to accidentally delete files (or very hard, depending on your point of view - a sync might just download your deleted files again.)

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    If you wanted you could create a cron job to automatically sync the directory every five minutes.
    – user46
    Jul 14, 2012 at 17:56
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    @BryanDunsmore: While rsync is efficient, it does involve checking every single file for changes, so for a large set of files you may find the disk and bandwidth usage too high to do it that regularly. Of course, YMMV! For a small number of files (say < 500) it is probably fine.
    – Malvineous
    Jul 15, 2012 at 2:36
  • @Malvineous: that's also what Dropbox does in its indexing... phase. I'm a great fan of rsync for traditional copy operation, but the question here is about a transparent syncing. Even putting rsync inside a cron job running every say 5 minutes would be very CPU hungry and prone to failure during the remaining 4 minutes and whatever. No, we definitely need something awakened by filesystem operations, able to only sync newly created or modified files.
    – Avio
    Sep 29, 2012 at 8:56
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Is http://owncloud.org of any use? is open-source and linux based.

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For Google Drive, have a look at grive. It's still beta as of July 2012. I didn't try to build it, but it's open source and its dependencies look like they could be built on ARM.

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Have a look at git-annex. Joey is working on it to get a better Open Source replacement for Dropbox.

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Since Raspbian has fuse I would think fuse-dropbox would work.

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  • Can't find any documentation on that, just the code...
    – Cade Roux
    Sep 27, 2012 at 3:51
  • Welcome to Raspberry Pi, nice answer! Could you please expand a little bit more the topic, adding some information about development status of the project, if you already tried it and so on?
    – Avio
    Sep 29, 2012 at 9:01
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I use Unison for all such synchronization, when I feel a DVCS would be overkill. Essentially it works like an intelligent two-way rsync of two folders, often through ssh. A simple example:

pi@raspberry ~ $ sudo apt-get install unison2.27.57
...
pi@raspberry ~ $ unison /home/pi/stuff ssh://server.example.com/stuff

For the first sync it will explain what is going on, then each time you run the same command it will show you changes and sometimes conflicts. If you want it in cron, set up passwordless ssh authentication and run with the options "-batch -silent".

Useful options:

-times  Always synchronizes modification time (should have been default!)
-ignore For ignoring paths/files
-path   For only synchronizing part of the directory (for speed)
-batch  No user interaction
-terse  Only useful output
-silent Only output errors

These options can also go in a configuration file. If you create "/home/pi/.unison/myserver.prf" you can then run "unison myserver". Check out the online manual and for a good primer "Setting up unison for your mom".

There is lots to learn about unison, and the configuration file format is a little weird. But I highly recommend it, as it really replaces dropbox and similiar services. I synchronize terabytes between lots of machines and it works great. The 2.27.57 version is available on most platforms (linux, windows, osx).

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Try Seafile running on RPi. Owncloud is more popular, but less secure. Plus parts of Seafile are written in Python, official language for RPi.

You can download RPi version from Seafile official website:

http://www.seafile.com/en/download/

Then you can use very detailed tutorial on how to setup Seafile on RPi:

http://draptik.github.io/blog/2014/04/21/installing-seafile-on-raspberry-pi/

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Have you tried SparkleShare?

SparkleShare is an Open Source collaboration and sharing tool that is designed to keep things simple and to stay out of your way. It allows you to instantly sync with Git repositories and is available for Linux distributions, Mac and Windows.

The only backend requirements for SparkleShare is Git, and that is available on the Raspberry Pi.

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  • The client side of this tools seems to be written in mono which would need to be run on RaspberryPi so Git is not the only requirement. One also needs a git server in order to use it unless he will use some public git services or buy a plan on one of them.
    – Krzysztof Adamski
    Sep 14, 2012 at 19:37
  • If you have a Pi already, you basically have the ability to create a git server in a couple of minutes.
    – briangonzalez
    Dec 12, 2012 at 6:19
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Crashplan on Squeezeplug. You can manage by redirecting / tunneling port.

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  • I'm not seeing anything in the SqueezePlug link about ARM architecture or "plug" devices. In fact, he's talking about a Fedora server. Regardless, much of that information is still useful.
    – Kyle
    Jan 18, 2013 at 19:26
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Or you can use sshfs to mount a folder like a remote drive. I wrote a small tutorial here.

I hope it helps

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The main use of my Raspberry Pi are BT and BT Sync.

Documentation of BT Sync can be found here. BT Sync for ARM Linux can be download from here.

Here is a tutorial.

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