Installing Dropbox on Arch Linux

Note: This is an old article, It’s likely outdated.

Install from Dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/install

I Installed to my home directory with the Headless install.

32-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

or

64-bit:

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

To use systemd as the local user

Dropbox told me to do this…

sudo echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo sysctl -p

This forces the creation of ~/.config/systemd/user/dropbox.service

systemctl --user --force edit dropbox

Adjust the following to your location (systemd complains if the paths are not absolute)

[Unit]
Description=Dropbox Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
SuccessExitStatus=0 1

ExecStart=/home/username/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

Environment=DISPLAY=:0

ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall /home/username/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

[Install]
Alias=dropbox.target

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep dropbox

systemctl --user start dropbox

Make sure it shows running/active (if you are using xorg-server, the fancy little tray icon should show up.)

systemctl --user status dropbox

This bit doesn’t quite work yet… Not sure what I need to start “After=”. Still researching.

systemctl --user enable dropbox