Running sage with files on DropBox

Question

I'm curious to know whether you can run Sage on a local machine but have your worksheets saved on DropBox. Then, I could run on my home or work computer and see the same worksheets. An answer to the question Execute notebook sessions without storing it at the server says that such functionality was being worked on in Spring 2011. What is the current status? Can it be done, or is this unwise for some security reason?

Accepted Answer

I just started to do this a few days ago. I set the variable DOT_SAGENB to point to a directory in my DropBox folder, and so the Sage notebook looks in this directory for its worksheets. (I think the question you referred to dealt with the Sage notebook server running at sagenb.org, for example, not Sage running on a local machine.)

You can instead set DOT_SAGE to a directory in your DropBox folder; then Sage will look for all of its files there. (If DOT_SAGENB is not set, it defaults to DOT_SAGE, and if DOT_SAGE is not set, it defaults to $HOME/.sage.) But running Sage, and even more so, doctesting Sage, produces many temporary files in DOT_SAGE, and there is no purpose sharing those in a DropBox folder.

Edit: set the environment variable DOT_SAGENB in the file $HOME/.profile, assuming you're running bash. Add a line like

export DOT_SAGENB=~/Dropbox/sage-notebooks/

Then restart your terminal window so this file is read and executed. Then run Sage. If you want to check what Sage thinks DOT_SAGENB is set to, run this at a shell prompt:

sage -sh -c 'echo $DOT_SAGENB'

Is there a settings file in which I should do this so that Sage starts up this way each time? Which file would that be and where? Thank you for the help!
calc314 (Jul 03 '12)
To be honest, things are not running completely smoothly: I get occasional error messages in the console. I can't pinpoint where the problems are, but be warned...
John Palmieri (Jul 03 '12)
Thanks. I'm experimenting to see what works. So far, I've had only a few issues. But, I do wonder about how much it hits Dropbox. From a slow internet connection (i.e., home), this might not work well.
calc314 (Jul 03 '12)
Just an update on my brief experience with this experiment...
1) The errors that I'm currently getting are all due to being on a computer that doesn't have something installed that is installed at sagenb.org. For example, I have a laptop without gcc and a worksheet that calls gcc to compile something.
2) The file I had to do the above environment variable setting in was $home/.bash_profile. This is on a Mac running OS 10.6.8.
calc314 (Jul 05 '12)

Answer 2

I've now upgraded to Mac OS 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) and am having some trouble getting Sage to read the dropbox files. I could use some advice.

I can get the notebook to open and run by using the following command at a sage prompt:

notebook(interface='localhost', directory='./sage_notebook.sagenb',port=8000)

Based on some experimenting, Sage isn't finding the dropbox directory when I try entering other things for the directory.

Any thoughts?

Running sage with files on DropBox

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