Unable to run dropbox daemon at boot

Question

I installed dropbox on my ubuntu 16.04 following the instructions from http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/install-dropbox-in-an-entirely-text-based-linux-environment

Launched the server with the pyton script and linked to my dropbox account. Everything works fine, I can sync my files as expected.

fmf@kodi:~$ ls -al |grep dropbox-dist
drwxr-xr-x  3 fmf  fmf       4096 Aug  1 18:05 .dropbox-dist
fmf@kodi:~$

fmf@kodi:~$ ll .dropbox-dist/
total 20
drwxr-xr-x  3 fmf fmf 4096 Aug  1 18:05 ./
drwxr-xr-x 31 fmf fmf 4096 Aug  3 10:27 ../
-rwxr-xr-x  1 fmf fmf   99 Aug  1 18:05 dropboxd*
drwxr-xr-x  9 fmf fmf 4096 Aug  1 18:05 dropbox-lnx.x86_64-8.3.16/
-rw-r--r--  1 fmf fmf    6 Aug  1 18:05 VERSION
fmf@kodi:~$

fmf@kodi:~$ ./dropbox.py start
Starting Dropbox...Done!
fmf@kodi:~$ ./dropbox.py status
Up to date
fmf@kodi:~$

Now I'd like to have it run at boot, so in the same web page I found instructions to create /etc/init.d/dropbox and set USER to my user. I run update-rc.d and tried to reboot. After reboot the daemon is not running.

So I checked:

fmf@kodi:~$ sudo journalctl -u dropbox
-- Logs begin at Wed 2016-08-03 10:25:51 CEST, end at Wed 2016-08-03 10:36:35 CEST. --
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: dropbox service...
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=203
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: dropbox service.
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Unit entered failed state.
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
fmf@kodi:~$

fmf@kodi:~$ systemctl status dropbox.service -l
● dropbox.service - LSB: dropbox service
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/dropbox; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2016-08-03 10:26:37 CEST; 10min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 3147 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/dropbox start (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)

Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: dropbox service...
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=203
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: dropbox service.
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Unit entered failed state.
Aug 03 10:26:37 kodi systemd[1]: dropbox.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
fmf@kodi:~$

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I finally managed to have dropbox to start at boot. I discovered that ubuntu 16.04 uses systemd, so I wrote a unit configuration file for dropbox:

fmf@kodi:~$ cat /etc/systemd/system/dropbox.service
[Unit]
Description=Dropbox Service
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '/usr/local/bin/dropbox start'
ExecStop=/bin/sh -c '/usr/local/bin/dropbox stop'
PIDFile=${HOME}/.dropbox/dropbox.pid
User=fmf
Group=fmf
Type=forking
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
StartLimitInterval=60s
StartLimitBurst=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
fmf@kodi:~$

Then I made a link to the official python script to control dropbox:

fmf@kodi:~$ sudo ln -sf /home/fmf/dropbox.py /usr/local/bin/dropbox

And enabled the service:

fmf@kodi:~$ sudo systemctl enable dropbox.service

After a reboot dropbox is running as expected.