More Dropbox Fun

I recently found myself in need of a file from Dropbox on my home/family computer.  But there's a different Dropbox account setup there...

So, I found out that it is possible (on Linux, anyway) to have more than one Dropbox account running at once; read on for details:



Adapted from here:


Install the primary Dropbox account as you normally would, then, to do the second one:

mkdir ~/.dropbox-altHOME=~/dropbox-alt dropbox start -i

You may have to do this several times to get it to work. I found that it helps to close the first Dropbox instance. Eventually, the GUI will ask for the account information and setup the second account. Note that the Dropbox folder will reside by default within your .dropbox-alt directory; leaving it there is probably a good idea.

Once you have setup the second account, you can create a symbolic link to the new Dropbox folder in your /home directory:

ln -s ~/.dropbox-alt/Dropbox/ ~/Dropbox-ALT

The primary installation of Dropbox will run on boot, but to get the second one running, you’ll need to create a script. I like to create mine inside ~/.dropbox-alt:

#!/bin/bashHOME=~/.dropbox-alt ~/.dropbox-alt/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

Then, since I'm running gnome, I just put that script in gnome-session-properties to start on boot.