Dropbox on Ubuntu seems to be impossible

Question

In brief

With the aim to mount dropbox folder under Ubuntu (18.04 LTS) I followed a procedure (see below) and I stopped when I could not find the command dbxfs.
Shouldn't it be somewhere? I mean, it's got to be a file, right?

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Some words more

Wow, I thought this would be easy with all the hits I got in my initial search.

I want to mount a dropbox folder while using the latest (18.04LTS) Ubuntu. Although I found a zillion opinions that the best thing to do is use the web interface on Linux, well, that doesn't help for those of us who have a ton of files that need processing. (I know, that's not what dropbox is for, but coming from Mac OS X, that's my workflow).

I found a result called CLOUDFUSION that I didn't realize was several years old. That explains why a couple of packages were no longer around.

Some people referred me to GNOME-ONLINE-ACCOUNTS which has apparently removed Dropbox support

I found another called FF4D that used FUSE and python. Huzzah! Except its only directions were for a "Quick Start" which is not a lot of help when nothing starts.

The most promising is a solution called DBXFS, whose directions are on a page less than eight weeks old (it's dated OCT 2018, and it's currently DEC 2018: https://www.ostechnix.com/dbxfs-mount-dropbox-folder-locally-as-virtual-file-system-in-linux/). I go through every direction with care. I look closely for any error. Every package is found. Nothing but white in the terminal.

But when it comes to the point of executing the command $ dbxfs I get "command not found". Here I am having completed the rest of the page, generating tokens and whatall, to no avail.

I realize that my git skills are limited to simple things like cloning, and that my understanding of FUSE is limited, but I can't believe I've spent an hour installing and upgrading tons and tons of things to still have no solution.

I very well may be misunderstanding what I'm to do. I searched my filesystem with everything I know to use to find "dbxfs", and it's nowhere. Shouldn't it be somewhere? I mean, it's got to be a file, right?

The task I need dropbox for is that I want to host a calibre library on my unused ubuntu machine. But the 1TB of books are on DropBox, and until I can see them, I'm at a standstill.

Answer 1

Shouldn't it be somewhere? I mean, it's got to be a file, right?

Yes it is a file, a python script, under a path hidden under your home directory

file $HOME/.local/bin/dbxfs
Python script, ASCII text executable

Some words more

From the link you provided there is a step that may point you in the right direction...

pip3 install dbxfs

Pip is a package management system used to install and manage software packages written in Python.
Now pip3 is often already installed, if not you can always do it with commands like

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-pip

If you install dbxfs via pip you will probably find it in the path $HOME/.local/bin/dbxfs. With file $HOME/.local/bin/dbxfs your shell will answer you that is a Python script, ASCII text executable.

You may find further interesting news asking from the shell

man pip
man pip3
man file

Answer 2

had the same problem but finally got it to work. What I did was to use the "long name" for dbxfs, I just ran:

/home/your_username/.local/bin/dbxfs /home/your_username/your_mountPoint/

Then followed the rest of steps as in https://www.ostechnix.com/dbxfs-mount-dropbox-folder-locally-as-virtual-file-system-in-linux/

It worked very nice. Hope this helps.