Joe Blog's A Day In The Life Of Your Average Joe

17Apr/0921

Dropbox

From what I recall, quite a few people have heard of, or even use Dropbox.

Dropbox is similar to Apple's iDisk, in the respect that it is an online backup/data storage facility. The only difference is, dropbox will give you 2GB of free storage, just for signing up. There's also an option to pay either $9.99 per month, or $99 per year, which will upgrade your storage capacity to 50GB. For me personally, I don't (yet) need any more than the 2GB, though I may consider looking into the 50GB option in future.

What I like most about Dropbox is that it's cross platform. For me this is fantastic, because I run Ubuntu (9.04 64 bit if you're interested) on my desktop, and my laptop is an aluminum Macbook. Now I had the problem of somehow remembering to put things in the Dropbox directory so that they would get synced to the server and thus between my 2 machines.

Solving that problem was a lot easier than I could've expected. No thanks to my friend Gabby, who told me what he had done on IRC. Using

ln -s

you can create soft links to the directories to/from the Dropbox directory, and any changes you make to that directory outside of the Dropbox directory, get automatically synced. Put simply, if I make any changes to something in ~/Documents, it automatically gets backed up/synced to Dropbox. Awesome!!

If you're unsure of the syntax of

ln

, as it is a little confusing, it's the following:

ln -s target link_name

And finally, if you want to join Dropbox because you haven't already, following this link will (according to Dropbox) get you a little bit more space :)

Edit: I've just been informed (thanks Matteo!) that the referral links don't seem to be giving extra space any more. This is likely because Dropbox limits the amount they give out. Please feel free to use the link at the end of the post if you want, but don't feel obliged to if you do want to sign up. Join Dropbox

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Comments (21) Trackbacks (0)
  1. aodhagan
    April 18th, 2009 - 00:50

    While dropbox is well know, I prefer SpiderOak. They have several features missing from dropbox (sync and share rooms), and they are also natively available on Ubuntu. Most importantly, they have a good security model to keep your data safe, even from them.

    -aodhagan

  2. Joe
    April 18th, 2009 - 00:52

    I’ve briefly looked into Spideroak. What do you mean they have features missing from dropbox?

    Do you mean that Spideroak has features that aren’t in dropbox, or vice versa?

    I know dropbox has a sharing folders option which allows you to share a folder with other users, though I haven’t looked into it that much yet :)

  3. Misc
    April 18th, 2009 - 02:20

    Wait, if I use the link, I will get more space?

    I think your last line should read
    “…you haven‚Äôt already, following this link will (according to Dropbox) get *ME* a little bit more space”?

  4. jldugger
    April 18th, 2009 - 02:28

    Fail.

    The “target” is generally known as the thing you’re pointing the symlink at. So I think you’ve reversed it.

    via the manpage
    ln [OPTION]… [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME (1st form)

  5. Joe
    April 18th, 2009 - 09:18

    Misc :

    Wait, if I use the link, I will get more space?

    I think your last line should read
    “…you haven’t already, following this link will (according to Dropbox) get *ME* a little bit more space”?

    Actually, from the Dropbox referrals page:

    “Once your friend starts using Dropbox, you’ll both get extra space. Hooray!”

    @ jldugger:

    I was using OS X at the time of writing, so I used the OS X manpage. I’ve fixed that now though, thanks for point it out :)

  6. antonio carlos jobim
    April 18th, 2009 - 11:44

    joe -T is in brackets because it’s optional. the -s switch has nothing to do with the target, it specifies that ln should make a (s)ymbolic link and not a hard link, which is the default.

    have you ever even used ln b4??? lol looks like u fail script kiddie luser

  7. Joe
    April 18th, 2009 - 11:51

    Antonio, I have used ln before a number of times actually.

    The terms I described above to use ln were what I used in this specific instance.

  8. matteo.zandi
    April 18th, 2009 - 12:09

    I just used your referral link! thanks!

  9. Hugo Heden
    April 18th, 2009 - 12:23

    Joe :

    Misc :
    Wait, if I use the link, I will get more space?
    I think your last line should read
    “…you haven’t already, following this link will (according to Dropbox) get *ME* a little bit more space”?

    Actually, from the Dropbox referrals page:
    “Once your friend starts using Dropbox, you’ll both get extra space. Hooray!”
    @ jldugger:
    I was using OS X at the time of writing, so I used the OS X manpage. I’ve fixed that now though, thanks for point it out

    Still, you should been more straight forward and mention that you would get some extra storage yourself. Since you failed to do that, I don’t feel I can trust you, so I’ll specifically *not* use your link, though I’m otherwise pretty sure I would have.

  10. Joe
    April 18th, 2009 - 12:25

    That’s a good point, duly noted.

    And I appreciate your decision to not use that link. For what it’s worth, I no longer get extra storage for referrals, as there is a limit on the amount they give.

  12. Phil
    May 3rd, 2009 - 16:44

    If you sign up for dropbox by clicking the link Here 250mb will be added to both of our accounts plus the standard 2gigs. We both win!

  13. Dougle
    June 11th, 2009 - 23:17

    I have had some difficulty with links in that i cant link out of the dropbox folder, most apps when they write there image,xml,db file unlink the files first, this is also the case with dropboxd:

    ~/.face -> ~/Dropbox/.face on two machines

    If i change the image no probs dropbox syncs it but i move to the other machine and ~/Dropbox/.face is no longer a link, it’s a new file created in new disk space.

    Any Ideas?

  14. Joe
    June 12th, 2009 - 02:21

    Dougle :

    I have had some difficulty with links in that i cant link out of the dropbox folder, most apps when they write there image,xml,db file unlink the files first, this is also the case with dropboxd:

    ~/.face -> ~/Dropbox/.face on two machines

    If i change the image no probs dropbox syncs it but i move to the other machine and ~/Dropbox/.face is no longer a link, it’s a new file created in new disk space.

    Any Ideas?

    Dougle, unfortunately I don’t really know why.

    What I would recommend if you want to sync things outside the Dropbox folder, is to look in to symbolic links (these work on Linux/OS X…Windows’ method is slightly different).

    Sorry I can’t be of any further help

  15. BobK
    November 21st, 2009 - 01:59

    Here is another referral link for the extra 250MP with your new 2 gig Dropbox account if you need it.

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU2NTQ5MTk

  16. Aaron
    December 18th, 2009 - 16:45

    Thought I would toss another referral link out there :)

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTY1Njc5NTk

  17. Diamond3
    March 13th, 2010 - 14:05

    Just another referral for extra 250 MB on Dropbox for you and me! : )

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQ5MzE5Mzc5

    Thanks a lot!

  18. poof65
    March 30th, 2010 - 21:56

    Here’s another link
    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTM2ODQ3Mzk

    Thanks for my future (or maybe not) referrals :-)

  19. tknice
    March 31st, 2010 - 01:42

    I have some referrals left here:

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTI0MTY5ODc5

    Have fun!

  20. Johan
    March 31st, 2010 - 21:47

    Hello you!

    Help yourself by clicking on the link below to get an extra 250 mb space when you join dropbox. I would be very grateful because it would give med 250mb + as well. Thanks :)

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMzNzEwMzY5

  21. c@t
    April 13th, 2010 - 17:31

    Here’s another link

    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTExNDM3ODY5

    to get an extra 250MB space


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