Insync as Flatpak (Linux)

mia · January 9, 2023, 5:10am

We appreciate your enthusiasm in wanting Flatpak support! I’ll be forwarding your comments to our Product Manager.

Thank you so much!

Pezi · January 21, 2023, 8:55pm

A flatpak would also be my number 1 wish!

kusi · February 19, 2023, 7:07am

Hi @mia so what was the answer of your product manager?

mia · February 20, 2023, 12:55am

Hello @kusi,

Flatpak needed to take a step back so we can prioritize major syncing issues in our engineers’ pipeline. I would be happy to raise this to our team again and assess how we can revisit developing this. Just to manage expectations, we can’t provide an ETA yet but we will update our users accordingly.

Thank you!

aaylnx · February 27, 2023, 4:53pm

Thank you for your update on this. As you can see from this thread, there are quite a few users who would like to see a flatpak version available. Yes, please do communicate this to your development team.

The desire for a flatpak is more than just wanting the newest, trendiest kind of package. For some of us, like myself, who use immutable Linux distributions (In my case Fedora Kinoite - but I also see from this thread that there are others like Steam Deck users.) debs and rpms are quite problematic. Hopefully, you all will be able to make progress on this in the future. Thank you.

Tom_Inglis · March 5, 2023, 12:16pm

It would be great to have this as a Flatpak! I am very happy to help test it.

If a Flatpak is too complicated, then an AppImage would at least let us install it on Fedora Silverblue and other immutable operatings systems, without having to overlay packages over the base image.

I also use pCloud which is AppImage based, perhaps for similar reasons?

canatella · March 6, 2023, 10:28am

Same, using guix here, and a flatpak would make my life simpler.

danielmota · March 10, 2023, 10:19pm

Have good News?!

A lot of people waiting …

mia · March 13, 2023, 1:34am

Hello @danielmota, please refer to this response as to Flatpak needing to take a step back from our pipeline: Insync as Flatpak (Linux)

I’d be happy to bump this up with our team once more. Thank you for understanding!

aaylnx · May 26, 2023, 1:48pm

Yes. Please bump if you are able. Immutable desktops keep picking up steam (not just Silverblue, but Vanilla OS, BlendOS etc), so this would be such a great option. Even for non-immutable systems it would provide a universal install option. Like previous folks have said, I am happy to test if needed.

profetik-777 · July 4, 2023, 1:57am

I come bearing good news!

I can get insync to run on Aeon OS (The BEST implementation of immutable linux OS out there, #justsaying).

In this example, I got it to run via distrobox 1.5.

Via tumbleweed distrobox.

Thanks to a community gem, cubicleNate, you follow the tumbleweed install instructions once you are inside your tumbleweed distrobox.

Here, you might notice that Insync installs, but with some errors/issues…and you can’t successfully launch it, due to…

profetik777@tumbleweed:~/Downloads> insync start --no-daemon
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “insynclinux/gui/insync.py”, line 19, in
File “click/core.py”, line 1130, in call
File “click/core.py”, line 1055, in main
File “click/core.py”, line 1657, in invoke
File “click/core.py”, line 1404, in invoke
File “click/core.py”, line 760, in invoke
File “insynclinux/gui/cli.py”, line 140, in start
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/app.py”, line 12, in
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/platui_impl.py”, line 14, in
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/htmlui_impl.py”, line 6, in
ImportError: libQt5WebEngineCore.so.5: cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Permission denied
[24205] Failed to execute script insync

So, after MUCH troubleshooting, it turns out, that this is due to an SELinux security policy.

Once I run the following (ps. anytime you mess w/ SELinux, you run a security risk, so USE AT YOUR DISCRETION).

sudo setsebool -P selinuxuser_execmod 1

sudo setsebool -P selinuxuser_execstack 1

After this is enabled, I restarted the distrobox tumbleweed and ran insync start --no-daemon, and BOOM it launched!

I exported it so insync icon shows up in my gnome menu via distrobox export command,

distrobox-export --app insync

And bada-bing, insync is running on my IMMUTABLE OS with the repo active for updates.

Fingerscross this works long-term, but I think this is it.

Skip to the second half of this video I made narrating my journey lol prob skip to the end to see it in action…sorry, I was just soo pumped to get this working, insync is a fabulous product…please extend my thanks to the devs, I know linux customers seem to be a little bratty and ungrateful, but trust me, we complain about the things we love lol and are worth our attention! hehe

Can someone else see if this works?

p.s. If you are on silverblue, you might be able to do this on toolbox too, but for now, go with distrobox.

profetik-777 · July 4, 2023, 1:58am

p.s.s. Link to install via cubicleNates blog

For convenience, pasted here:
Tumbleweed
I am not going to give the instructions with pictures with this step by step, its basically the same as above and my guess is, most Tumbleweed users don’t NEED pictures.

As per the instructions from the Insync site, you are recommended to import the public GPG key used to sign the RPMs.

sudo rpm --import https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
Next add the repository and call it “Insync”

sudo zypper ar -f http://yum.insync.io/opensuse-tumbleweed/rolling/ Insync
Once the repository has been added, you will need to refresh the repositories.

sudo zypper refresh
Finally, install the application and optionally, the service menu of choice. In my case I installed the dolphin service menu addon but there are other file managers supported.

sudo zypper install insync
Like the suggestion in the Leap instructions, you can install a service menu entry with your file manager. I have chosen the insync-dolphin option but you can choose what suits your desktop best.

Complete
The installation is complete and now you can now begin syncing your files with Google or Microsoft, whatever you need to do to be more productive in your day-to-day Linux life.

aaylnx · July 8, 2023, 5:50pm

I was able to get Insync working in Distrobox as well. I wrote a bash script to set up the container, install Insync and start it, and have Insync automatically start upon login.

Actually, my setup requires two scripts. My bash scripting skills are not that great so, if anyone can combine these two into one script, I’d be grateful.

Here is the main script. You have to have distrobox installed already of course for this to work.

#!/bin/bash

CONTAINER_NAME=fedora-insync

# Create the toolbox container AND initial update
distrobox-create --name $CONTAINER_NAME --image fedora:latest
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- sudo dnf update -y

#Insync Repo 
distrobox enter $CONTAINER_NAME -- sudo rpm --import https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- sudo bash -c 'bash -s' < create_insync_repo.sh

# Install insync within the container
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- sudo dnf update -y
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- sudo dnf install chromium insync -y

#Export Insync start script to host
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- distrobox-export --app insync  --extra-flags "start" 

#Make insync start at login
cp  ~/.local/share/applications  ~/.config/autostart/

#Start insync
distrobox enter fedora-insync -- insync start

In order for this script to work you need another script named create_insync_repo.sh in the same directory.

Here’s what should be inside that script

#!/bin/bash

sudo echo '[insync]
name=insync repo
baseurl=http://yum.insync.io/fedora/$releasever/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
enabled=1' | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/insync.repo

Until there is a proper Insync flatpak, I hope this helps anyone running an immutable OS needing to run Insync.

profetik-777 · July 19, 2023, 3:40am

So, having issues with your script. I gave it try, since my work around didn’t work after a few reboots in Aeon OS via tumbleweed distrobox.

Here is what i got from your script…

Container Setup Complete!
[insync]
name=insync repo
baseurl=http://yum.insync.io/fedora/$releasever/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
enabled=1
tee: /etc/yum.repos.d/insync.repo: No such file or directory
sudo: dnf: command not found
sudo: dnf: command not found
Application insync successfully exported.
OK!
insync will appear in your applications list in a few seconds.
cp: -r not specified; omitting directory ‘/home/profetik777/.local/share/applications’
Error: runc: exec failed: unable to start container process: exec: “insync”: executable file not found in $PATH: OCI runtime attempted to invoke a command that was not found

It might be time to go bye bye w/ Aeon OS…going to try in deb via ubuntu distrobox one last time.

aaylnx · July 24, 2023, 12:51pm

Sorry I did not see this until now.

I see the following error

sudo: dnf: command not found

That sounds to me like you are not running a Fedora Distrobox Container. Did you change it to a different distribution?

philcarbone · August 2, 2023, 2:43am

I’m also in need of a Flatpak. I now use Fedora Silverblue and I won’t be able to use this product if there is no Flatpak.

+1

ebits21 · August 15, 2023, 10:32pm

Thank you! Will definitely try it out. I’ve been layering the .rpm but obviously not great.

I wonder if this could be combined with distrobox-assemble somehow to have a ready-made solution in a config file. In the latest commits you can even automatically export the app.

ebits21 · August 20, 2023, 1:07am

aalynx I have it working very well and I managed to get it working with a single script too.

Like before, this is to install Insync in distrobox. Very useful in an immutable distro such as Fedora Silverblue!

I changed the following:

used the $CONTAINER variable everywhere.
changed the echo to a printf single line command and changed the bash syntax to work without a second file, thanks stackoverflow!
changed the autostart to only autostart insync and not everything in your applications folder.

Save the script as something like create-insync.sh and run sh create-insync.sh from the command line with distrobox installed.

    #!/bin/bash
    
    # Set a container name of your choice
    CONTAINER=fed-insync

    # Create the distrobox fedora container AND initial update
    distrobox-create --name $CONTAINER --image fedora:latest
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- sudo dnf update -y

    # Insync Repo 
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- sudo rpm --import https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- sudo sh -c "printf '[insync]\nname=insync repo\nbaseurl=http://yum.insync.io/fedora/\$releasever/\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key\nenabled=1\nmetadata_expire=120m' > /etc/yum.repos.d/insync.repo"

    # Install insync within the container
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- sudo dnf update -y
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- sudo dnf install chromium insync -y

    # Export Insync start script to host
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- distrobox-export --app insync  --extra-flags "start" 

    # Make insync start at login
    cp  ~/.local/share/applications/$CONTAINER-insync.desktop  ~/.config/autostart/`

    # Start insync
    distrobox enter $CONTAINER -- insync start

This was only tested on a Fedora Silverblue host.

I also put the script into a public Github Repository.

m0rvj · October 3, 2023, 12:50pm

Just wanting to add my voice to the request for simple steam deck install from flathub via Discover.

philcarbone · November 28, 2023, 4:16pm

Any updates on official support for Flatpak?