Friendly Tech Ninja Linux how-to's for beginners

2Jan/10

Howto: Use Symbolic Links to Sync Folders with Dropbox on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

I've been using Dropbox to sync files over multiple OS's for a while now, but I've always found it annoying that I couldn't sync folder I specified rather than just the one Dropbox folder. While my solution isn't quite what I want, I does a pretty good job of it nonetheless, this is done by using symbolic links.

Basically a symbolic link will allow a folder to be in two places at once. In my case I'd like to make a symbolic link of my /Documents folder and place it in my /Dropbox folder so it will be synced to my other machines.

Step 1

Open a Terminal and simply run the following command:

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Dropbox

It's that simple! There are many different ways you can use symbolic links, this is just one way I'm using it. Leave a comment below if you're trying/using them in a different way.

Note: The ~ represents the current users home directory.
Note: To remove the symbolic link just delete it the say way you'd delete a normal folder, so in this case you'd just delete the folder in ~/Dropbox/Documents. Don't worry I wont do anything do the actual ~/Documents folder.

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  • Bluegrassarizona2

    Thanks a ton.

  • David

    I entered this: “dat@Lucy:~$ ln -s dat/Documents/Bible Study Resources/Ministry/Tanilba dat/Dropbox”

    But I am getting the  following error when using your command: “ln: target `/dat/Dropbox’ is not a directory”

    (dat is my user name.)

    Can you offer any suggestion? I am using Ubuntu 10.04

    David

    • http://friendlytechninja.com Jonathan

      So I’m assuming your Dropbox folder is installed in your home directory, so in your case it’s “/home/dat/Dropbox/”

      I think the following command will fix your problem:

      ln -s /home/dat/Documents/Bible Study Resources/Ministry/Tanilba /home/Dropbox

      Note: I’ve used “” to make sure the command knows that Bible Study
      Resources is a single folder name, the “” makes the use of spaces
      between words work.

      Hope that helps.

  • Bluegrassarizona2

    Thanks a ton.

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