wwwhizz' blog Blog about some tech, some linux, my MIDIbox SID, etc.

Sync config files between PC’s using Dropbox

Synchronizing your configuration files between different boxes can be done very easily using Dropbox. Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service, syncing files with the cloud and all your PC's (Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, mobile applications are available too). For free! As Dropbox appears as a folder on your hard-drive you can easily symlink these files using ln -s

Installing dropbox:

Make sure you have Dropbox installed.
You can create an account here. (yes, that's a refferal link, but it will give you and me 250MB extra)
Information about how to install Dropbox under linux can be found here. There are Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu packages available, as well as a Dropbox-repository for Ubuntu. Other Distro's need to compile from source.

Information about running a textbased (CLI) version can be found here.

Symlink to Dropbox:

In order to sync the files in your dropbox, you simply move the configuration files you want to sync into a folder in your dropbox (mine is called nix):

mv ~/.bashrc Dropbox/nix/.bashrc

The following step is to create a symlink for the original location to the new location:
ln -s Dropbox/nix/.bashrc .bashrc

On other PC's you can simply remove the original config file and then create a symlink to your Dropbox.

Note that ln -s will also work for any directory. In case you're wondering, these are the files and folders I keep synced in my dropbox:

~/.bashrc
~/.screenrc
~/.vimrc
~/.bash_aliases
~/.bash_logout
~/.ssh