Here's how you can get Dropbox to run as a user service from systemd under Feodra. If you use a different distro that uses systemd the commands are probably the same but your mileage may vary.
For the most part I like systemd but good luck remembering all these commands in 6 months when you want to make another user service.
Install the headless version of Dropbox.
So as yourself (not root)…
# this installs dropboxd to ~/.dropbox-dist
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cd ~/.config/systemd/user
create file dropbox.service
[Unit]
Description=dropbox agent
After=network.target
[Service]
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env %h/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
ExecStop=/usr/bin/env %h/bin/dropbox stop
[Install]
WantedBy=local.target
Now load the new service into systemd and start it.
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable dropbox.service
systemctl --user start dropbox.service
systemctl --user status dropbox.service
Get the helper program.
curl -L -o ~/bin/dropbox https://linux.dropbox.com/packages/dropbox.py
chmod +x ~/bin/dropbox
dropbox status
I highly recommend making an encrypted directory like so
