We are aware of the issue with the badge emails resending to everyone, we apologise for the inconvenience - learn more here.

Forum Discussion

stickzh's avatar
stickzh
New member | Level 2
6 years ago

Smart Sync and aTerminal/Command Line

I find the Smrt Sync interesting. But I work on a mac and most of the time from within Terminal and command line processing. What wil happen if I attempt to access a file that is not local, I guess t...
Desktop
Download
File access
Sync
  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    6 years ago

    Hey there stickzh - interesting question!

    If you find (and click on) the file you'd like to access through a command via your terminal it should be downloaded locally (thus being recalled). Could you walk me through the steps you take and provide more information if that's not the case? 

    Additionally, note that many processes on your machine look at files that you may have not manually opened and in order to fulfill these requests from these processes Dropbox syncs the files. Examples of this include:

    • Backup services
    • Antivirus
    • Recently used file lists
    • Third party applications that monitor files in general. 

    If a file has been synced locally that you would prefer to have online-only, simply right click on it and select online-only from the Smart Sync menu.

    I hope this information helps to some extent and please keep me posted on your progress.

pierreboulez's avatar
pierreboulez
New member | Level 2

i'm trying to access files on a remote machine through ssh. the files there are "smart synched" meaning they're online only. i would expect dropbox to downoad the files when i try to do scp or cp the files in the terminal, but i keep getting Input/output errors and assume the files are still not downloaded from dropbox server. 

 

is there a way to force dropbox to download said files?

 

thank you

Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
5 years ago

Hi pierreboulez; thanks for joining our discussion here; how are you today?

 

I'm sorry to let you know that this won't be possible at this time as a Dropbox folder on a computer should not be accessed from a remote location or a different profile whatsoever. 

 

You can take a look at this discussion as well for more information on the matter.

 

That said, I'm always a post away if you have any more questions!

About View, download, and export

Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!