DropBox

Unity Asset Store Downloads to Dropbox

September 20, 2017 by Charles Hays in DropBox, Unity3D, Windows 10 | Leave a comment

Unity3DandDropbox

Dealing with 3rd party packages offered through Unity3d’s asset store across multiple computers, it can be a bit of hassle. When you download the package through asset manager it stores it in your Windows users folder. Then when you import it into your project is pulls it from this same location. But if you’re already syncing your multiple computers like I do (my work system and home system) for projects it is frustrating to find that the packages I downloaded or updated at work, are not the same as now when I get home. The solution, create a symbolic link to a shared dropbox folder just like we did in the article One Dropbox to Rule them All.

Unity3d as of 5 and 2017.1 stores the asset downloads by default in:

\\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Unity\Asset Store-5.x\

 

In my dropbox folder I created a folder at:

\\Dropbox \Asset Store-5.x

I then copy the contents at the Users folder to my Dropbox folder location and then delete that folder in Users.

Open your command window box in administration mode by typing in the taskbar searchbox “cmd”. Then when it lists Command Prompt at the top right click on it and select “Run as administrator”.

Then I create a symbolic link from Users to my dropbox location that looks something like this.

mklink /j "C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5.x" "C: \Dropbox \Asset Store-5.x"

Your cmd box will output something similar to this:

Now do the same on your other computers and when you download or update a package from Unity’s asset store it will sync across all your computers. This can also be a great way to move your Unity’s Asset Download location to another drive location if you find your main storage device getting full.

 

The following is for my personal use when performing this task.

mklink /j "C:\Users\&lt;User Name&gt;\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5.x" "C:\_CloudZone\Dropbox\___Clouds\Asset Store-5.x"

Sharing FireFox Multiple User Profiles On Dropbox

October 8, 2013 by Charles Hays in DropBox, Network | Leave a comment

DropBox FireFox

I love that FireFox allows you to have multiple user accounts using the user profile manager. If I need to login to one of my social profiles like Twitter as several different users at once I start up multiple instances of FireFox each using different profiles. However I find myself sometimes needing to login to these different profiles on different computers so the solution is to share their profiles through DropBox.

If you haven’t setup a shortcut for launching FireFox User Profiles see: Shortcut to Quick Launch FireFox User Profiles

Begin by closing all instances of FireFox.

Step 1 (Copy FireFox Folder to DropBox)

FireFox data and profiles are located in windows at: C:\Users\Master\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\FireFox

Start by copying this directory to your DropBox. In this example we will assume your DropBox is at C:\DropBox

When done copying the folder should be in DropBox like so: C:\DropBox\FireFox

Step 2 (Rename original FireFox folder)

Rename your FireFox directory at C:\Users\Master\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\FireFox to C:\Users\Master\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\FireFoxBackup

Step 3 (Create Junction Link to DropBox location of FireFox)

1. If you aren’t already login to Windows 7 or 8 as an administrator
2. Goto \Windows\System32 and locate cmd.exe, right click on it and select “Run as administrator”
3. Change Directory to your FireFox location:
a. cd C:\Users\Master\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla
4. Make a junction for FireFox to the copied location on DropBox
a. Mklink /J FireFox C:\DropBox\Firefox

Test

Run FireFox as normal and make sure it works. Is it slow? Of course what did you expect.

Deploy across other computers

Now repeat Step 3 on all the other computers you want to share the same FF profiles with. You will need to install FireFox on those computers if you haven’t done so already.

One DropBox to Rule them All

October 8, 2013 by Charles Hays in DropBox, Network | Leave a comment

dropbox

DropBox and other Cloud drive services are great for getting your files from one machine to another. However the caveat is that every time you update a file in your DropBox then it has to resync with all the other computers across the Internet. This can be kind of slow and eats up your bandwidth.

If you have multiple computers on a local network you can share the DropBox folder.

Setup one computer to have your DropBox folder. Then share that folder on your network. In windows you can map the drive or even setup a full junction point.

Say you install a program directly to your DropBox folder and it requires a specific path to run. Mapping the drive or setting up shortcuts won’t fix the problem with launching the program properly on your other computers.

1. Login to Windows 7 or 8 as an administrator on the networked computer (not the one with dropbox)
2. Goto \Windows\System32 and locate cmd.exe, right click on it and select “Run as administrator”
3. In the command window enter:


C:\> mklink /J “C:\DropBox” “\\COMPUTERNAME\DropBox”

In the above example COMPUTERNAME is the name of the computer on the network that has DropBox installed at C:\DropBox and that folder is shared.
So now there is a Junction link on your other computer that will call DropBox and treat it and any programs on it as if it was running from the same location on the other machine.

Note: Just because you created a junction link sharing your program across the network doesn’t mean it will run in every instance, you may find you still need to install it on the other computer and give it the install path of the original through the junction link you created. Also keep in mind installing like this may make you loose data on the source system location so back it up first!