Dropbox alternatives for linux sync managers

Hi - are there any good Dropbox alternatives that have free storage space, and have a sync manager (like the dropbox linux client). I use linux.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Mega is perhaps the best Dropbox replacement for the features you are looking for. There is also pCloud.

Some more suggestions here:

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Here’s another list:

However, if there’s a chance to get the thing self-hosted, I would highly recommend:

  1. Seafile
    Seafile - Open Source File Sync and Share Software

  2. Nextcloud
    https://nextcloud.com/

Both of them are great!

I use “self hosted” Resilio Sync…

I did try out Dropbox Pro again recently (I’ve previously used it), got my toes wet, with a Pro 2 TB account (but I only really want ~200 GB) - but realised I’d never get my money’s worth - if they had something for 10 % of the space for 10% of the price I might be tempted… and - I WILL NEVER trust them again!!! EVER! I don’t know what happened, but I switched my e-book collection from Resilio Sync to Dropbox, plus my Calibre e-book library database - and f–king Dropbox broke it! SNAFU! FUBAR! I actually thought it was toast - no sign of the F–KING folders in my dropbox account anywhere, no sign I’d even deleted them or anything - but I found the old .sync/Archive folder in ResilioSync and got them back - PHEW!

And - if we’re talking PC’s here - Windows, Mac, Linux, Dropbox is effectively “self hosted” because all they’re doing is providing an offsite backup (with alleged redundancy and versioning) - if you have 2 TB in dropbox, you need 2 TB on your ~/Dropbox folder or $HOME/Dropbox folder on your computer…

Google Drive is a bit of a PITA to get working on Linux… I don’t know if I trust it… But for my case, it makes more sense to pay them $5 /m for 200 GB, than Dropbox $20/m for 2000 GB (even if the per GB price @ Dropbox seems like better value). My GMAIL account is at, or bloody close, to capacity…

So - gonna stick with Resilio Sync - and only use my “free” Dropbox (been using in 10+ years and earned 11.5 GB free) or my Google Drive if I want to share something - 'cause I’ve never been able to figure out how to share something from my Resilio Sync, with some other net user e.g. with an emailed URL… Surely it must need a hole punched in a firewall?

ResilioSync can be had for free (I paid for a pro license)
It runs on HEAPS more platforms and architectures than any others.
It’s Peer to Peer - uses the same tech as bitorrent (it used to be called “btsync”)
The only thing the paid for version has over the freebie, is you get “selective sync” - which I do make use of e.g. I’ve got three ResilioSync shares

  1. mostly scripts and smallish config files (txt files)
  2. big stuff, documents, photos, pictures (stolen memes), binaries (i.e. programs)
  3. music

On my Macbook Pro, I have Full sync (two way - with backups) of the scripts share. I have selective sync on the “big stuff” - e.g. I don’t need to sync Windows or Linux binaries to my Macbook. Music - I only sync what I mostly listen too (which is a fair bit of niggly micromanaging shit - I think I need a better system).

Also - I’ve tried out MegaSync - but wasn’t “crazy” about it - and I expect many Nazi Network Admins at various sites and wifi hotspots would ban / block any of the ports that MegaSync uses…

My employer does block the “default” ports that ResilioSync uses, but I was able to get it talking from my desk at work, to my home NAS, by setting a “predefined host” with an allowed port (i.e. one that work allows), and on my router, port forwarding that to the IP address of the FreeNAS jail running ResilioSync. Piece of cake…

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This is actually a huge issue for me with too many things!
Because of min-maxing the profits and squeezing out every penny from the customers, they have certain business rules. For example, all the contract stuff, like renting a cloud, paying for mobile internet on your phone or other renting style online services, will always be either too little service for too much money or too much service for not so much but still more money than you would otherwise need to spend.

This is why like 90% (my estimation) of people buying a phone contract have way too many features and have way too much traffic included in their contract, even though they wouldn’t ever need it. This situation is so bad and hard to avoid, I am literally part of this group. I pay for 2GB Internet a month, when I only would need about 500MB. The only contracts that offer amounts that resemble what I need most are either more expensive or just as expensive as my current one. So might as well keep the 2GB for stupid reasons.

You probably can imagine, how many people (including myself) I know, who would almost kill just for getting a contract not screwing you over for paying for stuff you don’t even use. Give me a phone contract with 500MB traffic per month for $1 or $2 per month and I will pray to Business-Jesus for saving me.

The same goes for those Cloud Storage services. Either you get a tiny amount of space for an amount of money that is never worth it, or you get a much too big amount for money that would be fine, if you actually would need to use the entire space, up to the last GB.

The only services offering you any variable amount that you personally can choose, are already so expensive from the get go, that it’s not worth to scale how many GB you personally need, because the price per GB suddenly goes up to Level 7, just because you can choose the amount you want, yourself.

It’s absolutely undeniable, that once a service opens business that actually has reasonable prices for reasonable service, they will be sold out, as soon as someone gets wind of it. They would get so many customers, it wouldn’t even matter that their profit margin per single customer is lower than that of those other service providers, that trick you into buying the bigger service you won’t use, anyway.

I’m paying $30 (AUD) a month for 30 GB a month 3G/4G mobile phone plan… same price plan started off as 20 GB about 3 years ago… it’s “conjoined” with my home broadband ISP plan…

I can’t complain, even if I’m lucky to use 100 MB a month… it’s there if I ever need it - and - I need it for work! its like an insurance policy… in case my broadband goes down and I NEED internet access to do my job…

I hardly EVER do data intensive stuff on my phone… except for last friday, I was at the pub having a few “quiet frothies” with some “boon companions” when work called me and I had to break out my laptop and wifi tether it to Citrix to customer infrastruture…

Dang! After I’ve sung praises for Resilio Sync - the piece of crap is letting me down bigtime… I paid for a Pro license too!

Was finding it a real PITA to manually update my Music on my phone (stock Samdung Android on stock Samdung Galaxy S9+ - I was just mounting the phone over USB with MTP [and don’t get me started on that - EVERY SINGLE time I have to confirm “Allow”]) - decided to let Resilio Sync do that… Do you think that would work?

NO! I’ve uninstalled, wiped, fresh installed (several times ad nauseam)… Tried out a small subset of data - and - the f–king app from the Play Store just crashes - constantly!

It’s unusable! Heck - the iOS (iPadOS) Resilio Sync app is rock solid stable…

Seriously the FLAKIEST Android app I have EVER used! And I’ve been using Android since around late 2009 / early 2010!

So - now I’m in the market for an alternative solution…

In the meantime - so I’ve got Music on my phone, I’ll have to drag and drop content, and micro-manage my storage (e.g. delete stuff I no longer need on it).

Tried using rsync when connected via USB / MTP - refuses to work (rsyncs the folder tree, but NONE of my music files) - that’s a shame, 'cause I like using the --delete option so that if I delete some content on the master, it gets deleted on the rsync target too…

I’ve tried using NextCloud, but frankly it’s a PITA to setup… Might re-visit megasync maybe? I really only need it at home on my phone… if/when I start going into the office, I can continue using Resilio Sync I suppose between my desktop machine at work, and home…

– – edit – –
This might be a potential solution :

Any Mint users here using it?

Just been trying out Syncthing - and - SWEAR BIGLY WORDS #$%#$% ! Google’s GO implementation for Android banned / blacklisted SD-Card write permission! WTF? Since Android 4.4!

Don’t be evil? My arse! Syncthing for Android was written in Go… This has been an issue with Syncthing on Android since 2013!

Yeah - yeah - I know big evil tech… blah blah blah…

But I’m kinda stuck with using a fairly vanilla Android experience (e.g. there’s a bunch of MFA tokens I need for my job)…

Guess what? It gets worse! Google have decided to “relent” and will allow SD-Card writing in Android 11!!! I VERY much doubt Samsung will provide an Android 11 update for my S9+, I mean the S9+ is positively ANCIENT (3 years old!) - how else are Samsung going to convince me to buy another of their SHITTY handsets?

Note also - NONE of any of the Google branded smartphones, from the Nexus series, to Pixel, have SD-Card readers in them!

Might have to take another look at Warpinator - but it looks overly complex on non Mint desktops…


Hmmm - according to this Syncthing FAQ SD Card write is supposed to work under Android 10, which I’m running :


update edit - my problem solved :

My solution was found here :

I’m not shy of the CLI - nothing else was cutting the mustard… this seems workable to me…

Had to figure out the absolute path to my SD-Card (thanks Termux!!!) and a simple :

adb-sync ~/ResilioSync/Music/. /storage/[hex-string]/Music/.

and I’m apparently cooking with gas! Woo Hoo!

And there’s a networky solution with adb-sync, adb-channel, I can investage that later…

And I can later on simply :

adb-sync --delete ~/ResilioSync/Music/. /storage/[hex-string]/Music/.

and it will remove content that no longer exists in the master! BRILLIANT!!!


Edit 3 : update

Seems several issues in adb-sync have not been addressed - e.g. some GOBSHITES put illegal characters in filenames (like f–king “?” - what a F–KING moron!) - so I have to go and find these first - but that’s easily done with find and perl rename… The worst thing in adb-sync, when it barfs, it crashes, I supposed that’s ideally a good thing - then I know it failed on something… yeah… if it just carried onto the next one, I might never know…
Now to see if any of my Motorhead album names have umlauts, and whether adb-sync will shit itself :smiley: again…

Damn! adb-sync seems to be broken…

Yet to get it working on my newly built trio of Pop!_OS computers… and it used to kinda / sorta work, sometimes, on MacOS but not any more… e.g. just got into a Long Island New York band called “Moon Tooth” and listened to the one album I had on my phone on the morning commute (first time I DID NOT WFH in over a week) - I get to work and decide I want to hear some of their other albums - so I sync them to my desktop collection using ResilioSync - that works fine!

But when I try to use adb-sync to sync that to my phone?

IT DELETED that one album (I have “–delete” in my script - and I want it - I want to delete stuff I no longer have in my portable / desktop collection [which is ~100 GB subset of the 1000 GB collection on my NAS]) and REFUSED to copy the stuff over from my desktop machine (MacOS).

Project for the weekend : FIX THAT SHIT UP PRONTO!

adb-sync has been deprecated and is now called “better-adb-sync”:

I’ll get that working on my Pop!_OS machines before trying to fix it on MacOS… I like Mac, but Linux is better…

And the newest version has excludes - so I can write some logic to avoid .sync folder (ResilioSync) and .DS_Store (MacOS garbage). I think somehow I’ve got hidden files on the SD-Card that I can’t overwrite - I might even take it out of the phone and re-format…


NO!
“better adbsync” is NOT a drop in replacement for adb-sync!

The syntax is entirely different… I’m having trouble getting my head around it…

The “orginal” adb-sync tried to be a “Drop In” ersatz rsync for PC to Android sync… the syntax is/was nearly identical to rsync.

“better adbsync” syntax is NOTHING like rsync! How can the authors say adb-sync is deprecated and replaced by something that’s completely different? Sure it allegedly does the same thing, but it does it differently.
Anybody (e.g. like me) who wrote a script using the old tool, can’t just replace adb-sync with “better adbsync”…

Now you either write a new better script, or keep the old tool :smiley:

Keeping the old “deprecated” tool for now… :smiley: It kinda hates running on MacOS but works a treat when I run it from either of my Pop!_OS x86_64 machines…

I won’t bother trying to fix my old script to work with completely different parameters…

I’ll just write a new script … when I can be arsed…

OK - my script was being a PITA… Seemed to take forever… Just to get some music from my PC “sub collection” - about 140 GB (my main collection on my NAS is over 1 TB)…

Decided to take a look at my script again, inserted “set -vx” just before the point where it seems to take forever, and remembered (thanks to the extra debug info that “set -vx” provides) - I’m also checking for illegal characters in the filenames before I attempt to transfer / sync the files… **

Doh! That’s what was taking so long!

Stuck with using FAT32 on the SD-Card on my Galaxy S9+ - no other choice really… And Android / FAT32 barfs on dodgy characters in filenames - like “?” and “&” and “*” - so I was running 3 separate find commands with “-exec rename” if it found something…

Taken that out and now my sync is done in under a minute… Next time I see it barf on something, I’ll just do the filename cleanup manually…

So - I’ll keep using the old deprecated, no longer maintained, “adb-sync”…


** using find - i.e. find traversing (3 times) my sub-set of music folders looking for dodgy characters (one might ask the question - “aren’t you already a dodgy character”, and yes, mea culpa!)…