Headless MacOS Installation and Restart - have recent Dropbox updates enabled this feature?

Question

I am running a Mac Mini with MacOS Catalina as a web server and would like to administer this server completely through SSH access.

Syncing files via Dropbox would be convenient for Photos and some small amount of code.

Last time I checked it was not possible to start Dropbox without access to the GUI, the daemon and GUI were interdependent so the only way to start Dropbox was to login via the GUI.

I need reliability for the Server so for example if there was a temporary power outage and I was travelling I would not be able to restart Dropbox from afar.

If SSH/command line control of Dropbox is now possible is there an article or instructions on how to do this?

Alternatively if this is still Not possible, it would be useful to know that too.

Thanks in advance,

Walter · Answer

Hi there @BigSneeze, sorry for the late response and thanks for your patience while we were looking into this internally.

We heard back from the team and it seems that GUI access is required for login while remote login via the terminal is not supported. However, once a user logs into their Dropbox on this server, they shouldn't need to do so again.

Even if there are power outages for example, you'll still be logged in. As long as the same server instance comes back online, you can start the Dropbox app through the terminal and it will still be logged in.

I hope this information helps!