[Edit] To answer my question, yes, Dropbox does indeed store its application information in your user’s /home folder by default. As long as you don’t wipe your /home folder, you should be good to go once you reinstall the Dropbox app after reformatting/reinstalling your distro (Tested with a few Fedora-based distros, YMMV if you use Debian/Arch). I didn’t have to re-login; the Dropbox app just worked.
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?
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Omg thank you. I’m gonna try this out tomorrow
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.
This is what you need OP
https://askubuntu.com/questions/907425/how-do-i-back-up-and-restore-passwords-and-keys
i thought Dropbox was some sort of cloud storage thing. couldn’t you just mount it on whatever distros you wanted?
It is; I want to reinstall my OS without losing my Dropbox install
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.
Of allllll the things you’re worried of losing…. It’s a Dropbox install?
Yes, lol. Long story short,I don’t have the password because it’s a shared account
This is the most important piece of information. You should edit the post and/or title to make this more clear.
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.
New problem: they have 2FA as well
Fix: download what you need locally, reinstall Linux, find a different software or account, be free of this problem forever.
If my suggestion works, that won’t matter, it will still be logged in on the new install.
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.
I would back up all the important files you need before you change anything.
You dont need the install preserved, you need the login session preserved. I doubt that it’s even possible
Do you mean
- To persist the programs installed across multiple OS installs, or
- To persist the Dropbox login/folders across multiple OS installs?
Option 2, with more emphasis on the login component. My files are safe, but I don’t wanna bother my buddy to 2FA me every time I need to reinstall Linux for whatever reason.
- Having a separate partition for /home might be sufficient since dropbox keeps the login details in ~/.config
- Use a tool like rclone and run sync manually. Can backup the API key post the in-browser login. If you spend extra effort, you can create a systemd file to automate this as well
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.
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.
Try reinstalling your system in a vm to see what works
I assume you aren’t using an immutable/atomic distro where you can just rebase the OS?
I’m not, I’m on xubuntu at the moment
This is one of the reasons to always prefer docker over bare metal, if it was docker all you had to do is copy the volume over the new installation and starting the service there.
