rclone/docs/content/dropbox.md

title	description	date
Dropbox	Rclone docs for Dropbox	2014-07-17

Dropbox

Paths are specified as remote:path

Dropbox paths may be as deep as required, eg remote:directory/subdirectory.

The initial setup for dropbox involves getting a token from Dropbox which you need to do in your browser. rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> n
name> remote
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) swift
 2) s3
 3) local
 4) google cloud storage
 5) dropbox
 6) drive
type> 5
Dropbox App Key - leave blank to use rclone's.
app_key> 
Dropbox App Secret - leave blank to use rclone's.
app_secret> 
Remote config
Please visit:
https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth2/authorize?client_id=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&response_type=code
Enter the code: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_XXXXXXXXXX
--------------------
[remote]
app_key = 
app_secret = 
token = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

You can then use it like this,

List directories in top level of your dropbox

rclone lsd remote:

List all the files in your dropbox

rclone ls remote:

To copy a local directory to a dropbox directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source remote:backup

Modified time

Md5sums and timestamps in RFC3339 format accurate to 1ns are stored in a Dropbox datastore called "rclone".

Limitations

Dropbox datastores are limited to 100,000 rows so this is the maximum number of files rclone can manage on Dropbox.

Note that Dropbox is case sensitive so you can't have a file called "Hello.doc" and one called "hello.doc".

If you use the desktop sync tool and rclone on the same files then the md5sums and modification times may get out of sync as far as rclone is concerned. This will cause Corrupted on transfer: md5sums differ error message when fetching files. You can work around this by using the --size-only flag to ignore the md5sums and modification times for these files.