How to get sync status on headless dropbox install

It looks like you need to download the dropbox script for managing the daemon. Instructions on the dropbox website

wget -O ~/dropbox.py https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/dropbox.py
chmod a+x ~/dropbox.py
~/dropbox.py status

You can also create a symlink to your dropbox script, so you don't have to type ~/dropbox.py to run it every time.

sudo ln -s ~/dropbox.py /usr/local/bin/dropbox
dropbox status

With the helper script installed (part of the .deb package)

$ dropbox help
Dropbox command-line interface

commands:

Note: use dropbox help <command> to view usage for a specific command.

 status       get current status of the dropboxd
 help         provide help
 puburl       get public url of a file in your dropbox
 stop         stop dropboxd
 running      return whether dropbox is running
 update       download latest version of dropbox
 start        start dropboxd
 filestatus   get current sync status of one or more files
 ls           list directory contents with current sync status
 autostart    automatically start dropbox at login
 exclude      ignores/excludes a directory from syncing
 lansync      enables or disables LAN sync


$ dropbox status