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[Updated 20111025, see below]

Dear all

I have been using Jonnenau's Dropn900 for several months now(*). I especially like the "sync media" feature as it perfectly fits into my work flow. During a work day I take several pictures that need to be downloaded from the device, re-formatted and then put onto some web site. Dropn900 spares me from hooking up the device to my computer for pulling the images over. Instead it pushes the image files right into a location on my Dropbox folder from where I can access them.

The only thing that really bugged me was the fact that deleting pictures from my Dropbox folder made Dropn900 prompt for uploading them again at the next media synchronization. Thus my image folder was getting filled with obsolete pictures that I could not get rid of in any other way than manually deleting them from the N900.

(*) I must admit that I have not been using the true Dropbox features of the app much. Mainly because I access those files from my laptop. Yet also because the regular synchronization suffers from similar issues as the media synchronization.

Having just recently acquired a copy of the Python Pocket Reference by O'Reilly Media, I decided it was time to step into action. Having had no prior experience with Python and being by no means an expert programmer of any kind, I could not help but admire Jonnenau's clean programming style. It was very easy to find an entry point for my endeavor. Equally so to study his way of handling the comparison of local and remote files.

Within less than about an hour I had understood enough of the code to add the "Purge Media" option to the "Sync Media" menu which will delete all local camera files that are not already present on the remote Dropbox. The names of the purged files are logged.
¡WARNING: this option will also erase any files that have not been up-loaded to Dropbox yet!

An adapted work flow will prevent data-loss.
1.) Synchronize all camera media from N900 to Dropbox.
2.) Delete obsolete camera media files from Dropbox.
3.) Only then purge camera media files from N900.
I hope to have chosen a drastic enough expression by "purge" -- evocating the proverbial purgatory -- to make everybody think twice before light-heartedly pushing the button.

Be aware that this does not apply to the regular synchronization of files and folders. The rationale is that camera media usually is not modified locally and therefore does not need to be truly synchronized but in fact only be up-loaded from the N900 to Dropbox.
¡ If your own personal work flow makes you modify camera media on the N900 [after up-loading to Dropbox] then DO NOT follow these instructions!

Find attached a patch to update the file '/opt/dropn900/transfers.py'. If you are ignorant about how to work with patches (like myself half an hour ago) then let me give you some advice. From the terminal as root:
1.) mv transfers.py.patch.txt /opt/dropn900/ [changed 20111025: new patch file]
2.) cd /opt/dropn900/
2.a) cp transfers.py transfers.py.bak [added 20111025]
3.) patch -i transfers.py.patch.txt [20111025: option '-b' removed]
This will apply the patch to the file '/opt/dropn900/transfers.py'. If need be, you can easily revert to Jonnenau's original version.

I would like to express how thankful I am towards Jonnenau for providing the community with his great work. Furthermore this whole episode makes me feel very proud of not only being part of an open source community but finally contributing some (albeit small) share to our overall progress. Now I can join the exclusive club of Linux hacker savants -- simply hoping I did not mess up anything!

Sincerely,
Stefan Mueller
Switzerland

Update 20111025: I must have done the patching on my laptop computer but I do not remember. For I encountered the same difficulties as user noetus. So I adapted the instructions as well as the patch file. Sorry again for any trouble caused! -- Hope I got it right this time!

Wow, sm8ps. Thanks very much for that. This is a problem with DropN900 that has irked me for some time now.

Is this patch easy to adapt to fix the regular synchronisation too?

Hi all,

today was the first productive usage of the purging. It worked just fine. Be warned though that there is no warning of any kind before it deletes files without mercy. Over time it is certain that somebody will loose data because of that, so please make sure it is not you! (It might be me, I am afraid ...)

I do not recall my analysis of the regular synchronisation. After all my focus was not on that case and it was after midnight when I got done with my patch. So I do not recall what made me feel that the patch was not easy to adapt to fix for that.

On second thought, however, I believe the difficulties should/might be not so big. Now that you asked I will put looking into this again on my to-be-done list. So stay tuned but be (very) patient!

Cheers!
St. Müller, Switzerland

That would be great. Thank you very much Sir.

Will DropN900 be ported to the N9?

I can't get syncing to work AT ALL.

For regular (non-media) sync, I select a path in Settings to sync. As a test, I have one file there in my online Dropbox, and a different file there on my N900. It correctly identifies that it has to upload one file and download the other one, goes through the motions of doing this, confirms it has been successfully done, but when I go to either the online folder or the local one, nothing has changed. None of the files were uploaded/downloaded. I can go through the sync process again, with the exact same results - it says (correctly, as it didn't happen before) that it must download one file and upload the other one, goes through the motions of doing this, confirms it has been done, and again nothing has changed.

I know the developer has since abandoned this app, but if anyone else when through this schmuzzle and found a solution, please share. I kept my local dropbox path (in the N900) as the default.

I also tried media share. It said there were no files to change, even though I have a bunch of photos, etc, on the N900. So these were igored, and nothing happens.

Seems to me as if this app is completely broken, yet other users on here are reporting it as working correctly, so I'm puzzled.

You are right, files can't be uploaded, but they can be deleted, also folders can be created. Uploading also doesn't work with MicroB, except when the basic uploader is selected.

I think I'm going to look into other solutions for remote file syncing. I run my own home server, so don't strictly need the services of companies like dropbox. I looked at rsync, but getting it to sync (rather than mirror) is a pain. Next stop: unison. I am also installing easy debian and am curious if Powerfolder will run on it, which is a java app. If it does it will probably be a resource hog - it can be a resource hog even on my desktop machines, though on the n900 I would be syncing a fraction of the data, so maybe it would work.

Since a few days ago DropN900 is not syncing any files. It detects that some files have changed, apparently does sync them but they are not. The next time I try to sync the same files appear in the list of files to sync. I removed some new files in the DropBox server to check whether they were causing the problem, but the problem persisted. Today I removed DropN900, deleted the program folder and reinstalled the program. The same problem again. I guess there has been some change aither on the DropBox side or on the phone after some actualization that has broken the synchronization.