In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure Dropbox on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Dropbox is a useful file-sharing and syncing service that lets you sync files between different machines over the Internet for free. It’s very useful for backing up your important documents, pictures, MP3 files, video files, and other data. With Dropbox free account, you can store up to 2GB of data. To get additional space, you will need to buy the pro version. Dropbox client is supported on all major platforms like Windows, Linux, and macOS.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Dropbox on a Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Dropbox on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing Dropbox on Ubuntu 20.04.
Now we will create a source list file for Dropbox:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list
Add the following line to this file:
deb [arch=i386,amd64] http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu bionic main
After that, run the following command to import the Dropbox GPG key to Ubuntu 20.04 system:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 1C61A2656FB57B7E4DE0F4C1FC918B335044912E
If you see an error, You can fix this error by using a different keyserver:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 1C61A2656FB57B7E4DE0F4C1FC918B335044912E
Finally, run the following command in the Terminal to install Dropbox:
sudo apt update sudo apt install python3-gpg dropbox
Step 3. Accessing Dropbox on Ubuntu.
Once installed, open Dropbox from Ubuntu Dash and enter your Dropbox credentials, and you can start using Dropbox with Ubuntu 20.04. You can also run the following command to start it from the terminal:
dropbox start -i
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Dropbox. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Dropbox on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Dropbox website.
