Run Dropbox as a service on Fedora 15

Question

I installed the dropbox using the text based install method described here. However I'd now like dropbox to start automatically when the machine starts up, and start syncing the files. I'll need dropbox to run as the dropbox user, from the dropbox users home directory.

I think the following command will launch dropbox as the dropbox user, in the dropbox users home directory, would you correct me if this doesn't work?

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 sudo -H -u dropbox ./.dropbox-dist/dropbox end script   

Answer 1

My guesses are:

1. You specified the wrong path to the dropbox command; ./ always refers to the current directory, which is not changed by using sudo -H. You would still have to use /home/dropbox/.dropbox-dist/dropbox.

2. Dropbox is refusing to start because of end script in the command line. It is not part of the command – the original Upstart example was supposed to be of several lines:

   start on runlevel 2
   start on runlevel 3
   start on runlevel 4
   start on runlevel 5
   stop on shutdown
   respawn
   script
       # Without next line DB does not sync non ASCII characters (ubuntu 10.04-x86_64, db 0.7.110)
       export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       cd /home/dropbox
       exec sudo -H -u dropbox ./.dropbox-dist/dropbox
   end script
   

   As you can see, the Upstart config cd's to /home/dropbox before referring to ./.dropbox-dist.

---

For systemd, create a /etc/systemd/system/dropbox.service:

[Unit]
Description=Dropbox as a system service

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/dropbox/.dropbox-dist/dropbox
User=dropbox
# 'LANG' might be unnecessary, since systemd already sets the
# locale for all services according to "/etc/locale.conf".
# Run `systemctl show-environment` to make sure.
Environment=LANG=en_US.utf-8

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Use systemctl start dropbox.service to start the service now.

Use systemctl enable dropbox.service to make it start automatically at boot.

If you edit the unit file after it has been used once, run systemctl daemon-reload to clear the cached-in-memory one.