How to install Dropbox on Ubuntu 14 Server [GUI-less]?

I followed the steps in this link from Dropbox website: https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx

But when I run the ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd nothing happens... I don't see the message... I also followed this tutoral (http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/install-dropbox-in-an-entirely-text-based-linux-environment) and similars but I don't see any message in the output. What else can I do?

The program is being executed... it just gets stuck in the terminal without any message... it creates the directory ~/.dropbox-master and ~/.dropbox, but nothing else happens...

Solution 1:

It might be 6 months too late but I had a similar issue where running dropboxd on a 14.04 server (no GUI) seemed to hang (no link provided). No guarantees the fix is the same, but this is what worked for me:

I finally resolved it by going back a version in Dropbox. I replaced the dropbox wget command listed at their website https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx):

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -

with a previous version (above statement pointed to 3.0.3)

cd ~ && wget -O - "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-2.10.51.tar.gz" | tar xzf -

On running

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

I recieved the error message:

Couldn't start Dropbox.
This is usually because of a permissions error. Storing your home folder on a network share can also cause an error.

Get more help at [cannot post links yet]

Please contact Dropbox support with the following info for help:

/tmp/dropbox_errorOqCF3h.txt

At the end of the tmp file, I found

ImportError: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This was fixed with a

sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0

Running dropboxd again, I similarly found I was missing libSM.so.6, which is fixed with a

sudo apt-get install libsm6

Third time around, dropbox reports

wx error: Unable to access the X Display, is $DISPLAY set properly?
Unable to access the X Display, is $DISPLAY set properly?

A little googling told me that running

env - LANG="$LANG" ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

would get me going. After this, dropbox happily gave me a link for a web browser to connect the computer

A little tedious but I seem to be up and running.

Solution 2:

Try clearing the DISPLAY environment variable. bash$ export DISPLAY= Then try again.

That is what I just did to make this work on Ubuntu Server 15.04, because I had X running on the host I was logging in from.