Launch Dropbox on Boot

by AndreaCorso

If you had just installed Dropbox Daemon, you need to start it at boot.

For do it, this is a short script that do all the job.

Create a new file in directory /etc/init.d/ give file name dropbox.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/dropbox

Then paste the following script into file:

#!/bin/sh
# dropbox service
# Replace with linux users you want to run Dropbox
# You can use also ONE account
DROPBOX_USERS="firstuser seconduser thirduser"
DAEMON=.dropbox-dist/dropbox
start() {
 echo "Starting dropbox..."
 for dbuser in $DROPBOX_USERS; do
 HOMEDIR=`getent passwd $dbuser | cut -d: -f6`
 if [ -x $HOMEDIR/$DAEMON ]; then
 HOME="$HOMEDIR" start-stop-daemon -b -o -c $dbuser -S -u $dbuser -x $HOMEDIR/$DAEMON
 fi
 done
}

stop() {
 echo "Stopping dropbox..."
 for dbuser in $DROPBOX_USERS; do
 HOMEDIR=`getent passwd $dbuser | cut -d: -f6`
 if [ -x $HOMEDIR/$DAEMON ]; then
 start-stop-daemon -o -c $dbuser -K -u $dbuser -x $HOMEDIR/$DAEMON
 fi
 done
}

status() {
 for dbuser in $DROPBOX_USERS; do
 dbpid=`pgrep -u $dbuser dropbox`
 if [ -z $dbpid ] ; then
 echo "dropboxd for USER $dbuser: not running."
 else
 echo "dropboxd for USER $dbuser: running (pid $dbpid)"
 fi
 done
}

case "$1" in
 start)
 start
 ;;
 stop)
 stop
 ;;
 restart|reload|force-reload)
 stop
 start
 ;;
 status)
 status
 ;;
 *)
 echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/dropbox {start|stop|reload|force-reload|restart|status}"
 exit 1
 esac

exit 0

Make sure the script is executable and add it to default system startup run levels

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/dropbox
 sudo update-rc.d dropbox defaults

Control the Dropbox client like any other Ubuntu service

sudo service dropbox start|stop|reload|force-reload|restart|status