How can I make dropbox display an icon in Gnome Shell?

Solution 1:

You don't say which gnome-shell ypu are using. For me works (sort of) by installing the extension TopIcons and AppIndicator (this one with this settings:)

(Sometime the dropbox icon appears in the list, sometine no). The result is this:

Form time to time, the dropbox icon disappears after a resume (but dropbox is still working). Issuing

dropbox stop
dropbox start 

make the icon reapper. I reported the bug.

Solution 2:

How did you install dropbox?

The following should work fine (including in gnome-shell):

sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropbox

When asked to install dropbox from the original location choose not to. After installation it will ask for your login details.
You can check the process with this command:

ps ax|grep dropbox

You can start it manually (from a terminal) with:

dropbox start