ARA Storage Service

Using Dropbox in ARA Containers

It is important for any experiment to store the data/results for analysis. At present, ARA enables container-based experimentation and the data is stored in the container itself after the experiments. The data can be moved to users local computer through ARA jumpbox as described here. However, in this section we discuss the way containers can be mounted with your Dropbox account and directly store the data to the cloud. Such an option makes the data persists even after the container deletion.

Note

Ensure that you have a valid Dropbox account.

To use an external Dropbox drive as a filesystem inside a container, you need to do the following steps:

  1. Install the software dependencies.

    # apt update
    # apt install libfuse2 python3-pip dbxfs
    

    The dbxfs is the tool used for mounting an external Dropbox drive.

  2. Create an empty directory as the mounting point for your Dropbox drive. I used the directory name as dbox:

    # mkdir dbox
    
  3. Mount the Dropbox drive on the just-created directory dbox using the following command.

    # dbxfs dbox
    

    At the first time of mounting the drive, the command asks for an authentication code to connect the dbxfs tool with the Dropbox account. Copy the displayed link in Item 1 (as shown in the figure below) to an external browser and open it.

    ../_images/dropbox1.png

    The browser pops out a window for permission to allow mounting the drive as shown below.

    ../_images/dropbox2.png

    Click Allow, which pops up a window with the pass code. Copy the code back to the container terminal, and press enter.

    ../_images/dropbox3.png

    The remaining questions can be provide as per your discretion.

    ../_images/dropbox4.png
  4. On finishing Step 3, execute the following command again.

    # dbxfs dbox
    

    Any file stored in the dbox directory will be synchronized to your Dropbox account.

    ../_images/dropbox5.png