Is it possible to reinstall Linux (or distro hop) without losing my Dropbox install? Could I move the Dropbox install to my home folder so it survives the OS install?

  • redxef@feddit.org
    12·
    22 hours ago

    All the important login information should just be present somewhere in your home folder. If you back that up and restore it later you should be fine, no need to save the dropbox binary.

    If that is no option and you only want to back up dropbox files and nothing else follow the instructions below (I can’t guarantee that they will work, but they should):

    Back up the whole system, if something goes wrong you can at least restore to a working state. Read the instructions at least once completely before following them.

    Look at the documentation for dropbox to see which files are relevant and need backing up. Its the Dropbox folder with all the files, but will probably be some folders/files in your $HOME too, which store login information. Lets hope that they don’t store some metadata there that will invalidate the config if it’s running on a different machine (to prevent what you are trying to do).

    If there is no documentation, you can stop dropbox completely. Look for dropbox processes that don’t get stopped when you stop the GUI with something like pgrep -f -i dropbox.

    Once you are sure all dropbox processes are stopped run inotifywait -r -m ~. That command wont exit unless you stop it by issuing ^C. It will list all filesystem events in your home directory. Now start dropbox and see which files it accesses, those are the files you need to back up. It will probably be one or more whole directories in ~/.config and ~/.local.

    Add those files to a tar archive using something like this: tar cvJf dropbox_config.tar.xz [list of folders...]. Savre the resulting tar file somewhere else, reinstall and extract it using tar xvJf dropbox_config.tar.xz. Take care to run those commands from the same directory.

    The dropbox login secrets might also be stored in your system’s keyring, if you are using GNOME, then that will be GNOME Keyring. Open your system’s credential manager and look for stuff related to dropbox. Look for instructions on how to back up and restore those secets. I don’t use that often enough to be able to give you more detailed instructions right now though.

    References

    Edit:

    • backups
    • keyring
  • giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    9·
    1 day ago

    i thought Dropbox was some sort of cloud storage thing. couldn’t you just mount it on whatever distros you wanted?

      • Goku@lemmy.world
        1·
        20 hours ago

        It’s possible if you configure your /home/ to use a separate partition. But you would have to do that in advance. Even in that case you’d have to reinstall it but the nice thing about it is you won’t have to reconfigure anything. It will be able to get all your previous settings from your home dir.

        You could backup your home dir before reinstalling then copy it over after for the same effect.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
    3·
    20 hours ago

    You can generally back up your home folder and use it with another distro, without losing data. (though it can happen that stored settings are not compatible with some changed programs).

    All your data is in your home folder.

    • Horsey@lemmy.worldOP
      13·
      1 day ago

      Yes, lol. Long story short,I don’t have the password because it’s a shared account

      • Peasley@lemmy.world
        2·
        14 hours ago

        You dont need the install preserved, you need the login session preserved. I doubt that it’s even possible

      • Badabinski@kbin.earth
        21·
        1 day ago

        This is the most important piece of information. You should edit the post and/or title to make this more clear.

      • davidgro@lemmy.world
        13·
        1 day ago

        Well, that makes a huge difference to the meaning of the question.

        I don’t know, but maybe the login is held in a dotfile such as ~/.dropbox or maybe in ~/.config/dropbox or similar, and just backing up that (not to Dropbox!) would be enough to restore being logged in on a different system.

      • KurtVonnegut@mander.xyz
        3·
        23 hours ago

        Ah ok. So its not so much the current files that you want to retain, but the ability to receive files locally through sync, when someone else elsewhere makes a change?

        Sounds a bit like not wanting to remove the Netflix app because its logged in with the unknown password of an ex.

  • aarch0x40@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 day ago

    It is of course possible but you’d likely be causing a big mess on the filesystem. If you’re able to move the install into a home directory, why not just archive what you need and restore it after reinstall? This would be the cleaner way to go about it.