Long ago, Dropbox provided a Public folder that had some special capabilities. Those capabilities are now better integrated into Dropbox, but I still use my Public folder for things I intend to share.

I set up a server to make that folder available over the web. I can now share links directly to files, avoiding Dropbox’s web interface altogether, and I don’t have to sign up for a third-party service like Droplr or CloudApp.

For this experiment, I’m using a 512MB VPS from BuyVM. You could get away with a 256MB-sized one, I’d imagine. (You should also use my BuyVM Manager app to keep tabs on your VPS).

The following Dropbox installation instructions are based on these directions from Dropbox itself and this post from Ben Hedrington; they apply specifically to Ubuntu 12.04, but will likely work on other Ubuntu versions and common Linux distros.

Install Dropbox

Determine whether you’re running 32 or 64 bit Linux (uname -m). Then, run the applicable command to get Dropbox onto the server:

32 bit: cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

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

And we’ll need this Python script to manage Dropbox:

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget "https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/dropbox.py"
sudo mv download\?dl=packages%2Fdropbox.py dropbox
sudo chmod +x dropbox

Set up Dropbox

Run the Dropbox daemon to link it to your account: ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

dropboxd will tell you “This client is not linked to any account…”. Follow its instructions to copy and paste a URL into your web browser to authorize access. Once Dropbox is connected, you can kill it with CTRL-c.

Grab the contents of this init script and put them a file called /etc/init.d/dropbox. Replace "user1 user2", on line 14, with "your_linux_username", not your Dropbox username. Make the init script executable, and make it start on boot:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/dropbox
sudo update-rc.d dropbox defaults

Check if Dropbox is running, and start it if necessary:

sudo service dropbox status
sudo service dropbox start

Selective Sync

Dropbox will, by default, sync your entire Dropbox folder onto your server. This probably isn’t what you want, especially if you use Camera Upload.

cd ~/Dropbox and use dropbox ls to see what’s there. Then, for every top-level folder you don’t want on the server, run dropbox exclude add folder-name.

Serve via nginx

Now that Dropbox is set up and syncing (congrats!), let’s serve up your ~/Dropbox/Public folder via everyone’s favorite HTTP server. For this part, I’ll assume you have a domain (dropbox.dzombak.com in this example) with an A record pointed to this VPS.

This is very straightforward: just drop this nginx config into /etc/nginx/sites-available. Replace all instances of my domain name and Linux username with yours.

If you want, you could change the autoindex directive on line 14 to expose a directory index of your Public folder.

Link to this configuration from /etc/nginx/sites-enabled, reload your configuration with /etc/init.d/nginx reload, and you’re all set.

Update: Generate public links, easily

I wrote a simple AppleScript that works with Quicksilver to generate and copy public links for files hosted using this mechanism.