Dropbox Autostart on Ubuntu with Systemd
The Dropbox tool has a dropbox autostart command that claims to
automatically start the Dropbox service at login, it doesn't work for
me1 so this is how to achieve the same aim with Systemd.
As an aside, I highly recommend you check out Syncthing as a lightweight self–hosted Dropbox alternative if you are not tied to Dropbox for some reason.
Create a new Systemd user service, note that this will need sudo:
$ cat <<EOF > /usr/lib/systemd/user/dropbox.service [Unit] Description=Dropbox file sync service After=network.target [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropbox start ExecStop=/usr/bin/dropbox stop [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target EOF
Reload Systemd files:
$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
Check if the new service is there:
$ systemctl --user list-unit-files -t service | grep dropbox dropbox.service disabled enabled
Enable and start the new service:
$ systemctl --user enable dropbox Created symlink /home/rosstimson/.config/systemd/user/multi-user.target.wants/dropbox.service → /usr/lib/systemd/user/dropbox.service. $ systemctl --user start dropbox
Check all is well:
systemctl --user status dropbox
● dropbox.service - Dropbox file sync service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/dropbox.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-06-08 19:35:03 BST; 1h 50min ago
Process: 1821571 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropbox start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1821572 (dropbox)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/dropbox.service
└─1821572 /home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-98.4.158/dropbox
Jun 08 19:35:02 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:02 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821572]: dropbox: load fq extension '/home/rosstimson/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-l>
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821571]: Dropbox isn't running!
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 dropbox[1821571]: Done!
Jun 08 19:35:03 REM-RT-29641 systemd[1780]: Started Dropbox file sync service.
$ dropbox status
Up to date
Footnotes:
1
Maybe the built-in autostart works for the default GNOME desktop environment but I run a more minimal setup.