Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

post, Jan 24, 2021 on Mitja Felicijan's blog

A few months ago I experimented with DigitalOcean spaces as my backup solution +that could replace Dropbox +eventually. That solution +worked quite nicely, and I was amazed how smashing together a couple of existing +solutions would work this fine.

I have been running that solution in the background for a couple of months now +and kind of forgot about it. But recent developments around deplatforming and +having us people hostages of technology and big companies speed up my goals to +become less dependent on +Google, +Dropbox +etc and take back some control.

I am not a conspiracy theory nut, but to be honest, what these companies are +doing lately is out of control. It is a matter of principle at this point. I +have almost completely degoogled my life all the way from ditching Gmail, +YouTube and most of the services surrounding Google. And I must tell you, I feel +so good. I haven't felt this way for a long time.

Anyways. Let's get to the meat of things.

Before you continue you should read my post about syncing to +Dropbox.

Also to note, I am using Linux on my machine with Gnome desktop environment. +This should work on MacOS too. To use this on Windows I suggest using +Subsystem for Linux +or Cygwin.

Folder structure

I liked structure from Dropbox. One folder where everything is located and +synced. So, that's why adopted this also for my sync setup.

~/Vault
+   ↳ backup
+   ↳ bin
+   ↳ documents
+   ↳ projects
+

All of my code is located in ~/Vault/projects folder. And most of the projects +are Git repositories. I do not use this sync method for backup per see but in +case I reinstall my machine I can easily recreate all the important folder +structure with one quick command. No external drives needed that can fail etc.

Sync script

My sync script is located in ~/Vault/bin/vault-backup.sh

#!/bin/bash
+
+# dconf load /com/gexperts/Tilix/ < tilix.dconf
+# 0 2 * * * sh ~/Vault/bin/vault-backup.sh
+
+cd ~/Vault/backup/dotfiles
+
+MACHINE=$(whoami)@$(hostname)
+mkdir -p $MACHINE
+cd $MACHINE
+
+cp ~/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json settings.json
+cp ~/.s3cfg s3cfg
+cp ~/.bash_extended bash_extended
+cp ~/.ssh ssh -rf
+
+codium --list-extensions > vscode-extension.txt
+dconf dump /com/gexperts/Tilix/ > tilix.dconf
+
+cd ~/Vault
+s3cmd sync --delete-removed --exclude 'node_modules/*' --exclude '.git/*' --exclude '.venv/*' ./ s3://bucket-name/backup/
+
+echo `date +"%D %T"` >> ~/.vault.log
+
+notify-send \
+	-u normal \
+	-i /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/96x96/status/security-medium-symbolic.symbolic.png \
+	"Vault sync succeded at `date +"%D %T"`"
+

This script also backups some of the dotfiles I use and sends notification to +Gnome notification center. It is a straightforward solution. Nothing special +going on.

One obvious benefit of this is that I can omit syncing Node's node_modules +or Python's .venv and .git folders.

You can use this script in a combination with Cron.

0 2 * * * sh ~/Vault/bin/vault-backup.sh
+

When you start syncing your local stuff with a remote server you can review your +items on DigitalOcean.

Dropbox Spaces

I have been using this script now for quite some time, and it's working +flawlessly. I also uninstalled Dropbox and stopped using it completely.

All I need to do is write a Bash script that does the reverse and downloads from +remote server to local folder. This could be another post.