Installing Dropbox on Kali Linux 2021

UPDATED Jan 2021: A few tweaks required for Kali 2020.4 distribution

I’ve always found installing Dropbox on Kali linux a bit hit-and-miss but the more recent distributions of Kali linux seem to handle it a bit better so I thought I’d write a quite guide now its become a more predictable process.

Prerequisites

Ok so there’s a few things to know first:

Get a second Dropbox Account

I highly recommend not using you primary Dropbox account on Kali.  Remember even when using a reputable service like HackTheBox for ethical hacking, you are still VPNing in to a network of hackers-in-training.  I have a couple of free Dropbox accounts that share a folder from the root with my main account.  This means I can still transfer files easily but should my primary account be compromised, no files other than those in my Kali-only-Dropbox account are exposed (and these are just notes on my training).

Check your filesystem

In 2018, Dropbox dropped support for any filesystems on Linux other than EXT4 so if you are using anything other than this, you’re out of luck

Download the Debian installer

Kali is based upon Debian so download the Debian install to your Kali box from the Dropbox website: https://www.dropbox.com/en_GB/install-linux

Make sure you have all the packges installed that Dropbox will required by running the following:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt install gdebi gdebi-core

You shouldn’t need it if you are using the latest version of Kali but just in case, verify you have Python 3 installed:

sudo apt install python3-gpg

Installing Dropbox on Kali

In a terminal window, browse to the folder where you downloaded the installer (most likely the Downloads folder) and make the downloaded file executable:

sudo chmod +x dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb

Run the following command to execute the installer:

sudo gdebi ./dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb

The installer will run and you’ll see a message saying “You are not running Debian or Ubuntu. Not adding Dropbox repository.” – you can ignore this.

Once this installation has finished, you need to install the Dropbox daemon and initialize it by running the following command NOT as root (nor using sudo):

dropbox start -i

You will see a pop up dialog box from Dropbox asing you to download the priorietary daemon, click OK:

When this install finishes, Dropbox will run and a login screen will be launched in your browser, login and you should see the Dropbox icon in the top-right hand corner of your Kali desktop start to sync.

Note for some reason on the latest version, Dropbox shows to icons in the system tray – this doesn’t seem to have any adverse affect:

Enjoy!