Dropbox on fileshare folder

[jabraham]

Has anyone used Dropbox to share a folder on the server more widely over the interwebs?

I’ve been enjoying dropbox on my own (client) machines, but now I have a combination of off-site and on-site people who want to collaborate. I was thinking I could use dropbox for it, since it provides automatic syncing over multiple OS’s and provides web and iOS access.

There’s this app called DropLink which basically creates a symlink from the dropbox (synced) folder to any other folder (e.g. folder inside the servers fileshare), and then the dropbox app sees changes in your server folder and propogates it to the web and to everyone else’s machine. (Of course I don’t need an app to do a symlink.)

(Or does anyone recommmend some other similar approach for distributed multi-os multi-site fileshare? Dropbox is a great product, but it is third-party, closed source, and proprietary. If webdav worked to windows machines I’d just use that, but I’ve basically given up trying to get windows machines to work with webdav.)

[jabraham]

You guys are a quiet bunch…

Just FYI in case anyone is following along, this seems to work well. Installed dropbox, created a softlink in my dropbox folder to the fileshare directory. Then invite people to share the directory using the dropbox interface.

My windows based off-site collaborators can install dropbox (and get a synchronized copy of the same directory on their system) or just access the files via the web interface.

I think I need to be logged into the server for dropbox to sync the files, which isn’t a problem for me. If it’s a problem for you, you may be able to find the launchd plist and hack it.

—
John

[Author]

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