Google Drive and OneDrive Integration?

Support & Help Requests
1

Looking to integrate Google Drive and OneDrive. I don’t want to use InSync or other proprietary solutions. Any suggestions on how to get this to work? Would’ve been nice to have GNOME on-line accounts capability in Mate. Currently on Ubuntu Mate 17-04.

2

Fair enough about wanting to avoid proprietary software, but as a wise man once said, “It is proprietary, but so is Drive” (Looking for advice on GOOGLE services integration).

One option is google-drive-ocamlfuse, as discussed recently by OMG! Ubuntu!. This mounts Drive like how GNOME does it rather than syncing.

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the info. The google-drive-ocamlfuse article says that the PPA is yet to add support for Ubuntu 17.04. Will try it as soon as it is added.

4

I think that there is no need to create new duplicate topic, so I ask here.

I'm using Ubuntu MATE 16.04.4 LTS without xenial-mate PPA.

I have gnome-online-accounts package installed.
I opened mate-control-center, selected Online Accounts (executable is credentials-preferences, right?) and added Google account:

mate-oa.png898×604 61.8 KB

And nothing happened.

In modern Ubuntu 17.10 after this operation Nautilus mounts Google Drive location and places it on desktop and in sidebar. Ubuntu 17.10 understands google-drive://[email protected]/ in address bar of Nautilus (or Caja launched under GNOME session), but 16.04 LTS does not understand such addresses.

What is interesting - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has gvfsd-google plugin from gvfs-backends package.

What is wrong?
What is the best and user-friendly way to get Google Drive working on my 16.04 LTS system?
It is possible to get the same user experience as caja-dropbox with Google Drive?
Should I use Grive2 or google-drive-ocamlfuse?

5

Norbert

For the newbie that needs hand-holding…
How to you get the gnome-online-accounts package installed ?

Thanks

W

6

Sorry if this does not answer any questions directly, but …

You people should really look into something called “NextCloud”.

All you need is an old laptop, it can be one with a broken screen and keys missing off the keyboard etc, as long as it will be reliable to keep running 24/7. Just plug into a monitor and usb keyboard for the installation. You can install Ubuntu MATE in it and install NextCloud and use it for your own server.
There are plenty of good tutorials on the internet and even youtubes about it. Contrary to many people’s assumptions though, you do not need the server edition of Ubuntu, you can use a normal MATE desktop installation which makes things a little easier for most people. (You don’t have to ssh in, (unless you want to), and you can use pluma instead of nano, and so on).
It works similar to DropBox. It also has features like mail and calendar and photo gallery if you want to use it.
It’s easy enough for most people to install NextCloud for use in a LAN, and that’s all the tutorials I’ve seen will cover.
With just a little extra learning and a few extra steps it can be made secure enough to be accessible over the internet.
That way you can get away from proprietary software and keep your files private and you can have as much disk space as you want for a very low cost, (almost nothing).

1 Like
7

It seems that I misunderstood something.

I mean

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-google unity-control-center-signon

and then ran

credentials-preferences

but this does not change anything on 16.04 LTS. This does not enable Google Drive in Caja.
So this part is closed. But it is useful for Contacts and Calendar synchronization with Evolution.

You are absolutely right. And I have NAS in my network.

But my original question was raised when I recommended my colleague to switch from MS Windows to Ubuntu MATE. But he needs to use some familiar utilities.

After 3 hours of googling I decided to use the following solution:

  1. I installed Grive2 from WebUpd8 PPA:

     sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install grive

  2. Then I installed grive-tools package manually from The Fan Club Grive Tools PPA (they does not have packages for 15.10 and newer versions):

     wget https://launchpad.net/~thefanclub/+archive/ubuntu/grive-tools/+files/grive-tools_1.15_all.deb
 sudo gdebi grive-tools_1.15_all.deb

  3. Then I ran grive-setup and set-up my Google account

     /opt/thefanclub/grive-tools/grive-setup

  4. After this I enabled indicators in mate-tweak (System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> MATE Tweak)

    Interface tab -> Panel Features -> Enable Indicators

  5. Logged out

  6. After log-in grive-indicator is shown and started to sync my Google Drive automatically

  7. To hide its notification I opened Preferences and unchecked Show On Screen Notifications

  8. To be more productive I added ~/Google Drive folder to Bookmarks with Ctrl+D in Caja.

I'm comfortable with this solution.

1 Like
8

I found other working solution.

On Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS we need the following

  1. install one package:

     sudo apt-get install gnome-online-accounts

  2. And then set-up Google account in gnome-control-center:

     env XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center online-accounts

  3. Afterwards you will get your Google Drive in the Devices section of Caja named [email protected]. If you open this folder in Caja, then its location would be google-drive://[email protected]. This folder is synced automatically. But Google Docs will be opened in the browser.

Hope this helps.

9

I have two problems:

Once I click on Google in the Online accounts, I can’t paste the password from my password manager.

Also, I can’t start gnome-online-accounts from the menu.

Otherwise, it seems to work.

If you could provide with info on how to solve these 2 problems, that would be great.

Thanks.