IMPORTANT: Dropbox will sync everything you have to your EC2 machine, so if you are already using Dropbox for a lot of stuff, you might want to create a separate Dropbox account just for the course.
Start at the login prompt on your EC2 machine:
cd /root
If you can not do this(“Permission denied”), make sure you are in superuser mode. (You should see a text line that starts with something like
root@ip-10-235-34-223:~$. If not, use “sudo bash” to switch.)
Then, grab the latest dropbox installation package for Linux:
wget -O dropbox.tar.gz "http://www.dropbox.com/download/?plat=lnx.x86_64"
Unpack it:
tar -xvzf dropbox.tar.gz
Make the Dropbox directory on /mnt and link it in:
mkdir /mnt/Dropbox
ln -fs /mnt/Dropbox /root
and then run it, configuring it to put stuff in /mnt:
HOME=/mnt /root/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &
When you get a message saying “this client is not linked to any account”, copy/paste the URL into browser and go log in. Voila!
Your directory ‘/root/Dropbox’, or, equivalently, ‘/mnt/Dropbox’, is now linked to your Dropbox account!