Grive2 is not functioning anymore, do we have alternative to get Google Drive working on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu MATE 16.04.6 LTS on about 5 different machines.

I need to have sync for Google Drive folders to cooperate with my colleagues.

Until recently I was able to use grive2 for syncing my Google Drive. But currently there are OAuth2 security-related problems with grive2 (for details see issue on github). Fixing them by end-user is a bit difficult and time-wasting for 2+ simultaneous installs.

Do we have any alternative to get Google Drive working on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS?

Answer 1

Yes, we have an alternative - we can run Google Drive using Wine through PlayOnLinux.
I tested the method below using PlayOnLinux 4.3.4.

Steps to install:

1. Launch PlayOnLinux
2. Click Install or Install a program
3. Type google drive in Search field, select Google Drive Sync Enterprise
4. Click Install, confirm testing by pressing OK, follow steps of installation wizard
5. Close PlayOnLinux confirming closing all applications.

Steps to configure:

1. Launch Google Drive Sync by clicking on its icon on desktop or in Applications → Internet → Google Drive Sync.
2. In opened Welcome to Backup and Sync window click Get Started button
3. Login to your Google account from the application or using web-browser( by clicking Having trouble? Sign in with your browser instead).
4. Click GOT IT.
5. Configure folders to sync (personally I unchecked all folders on top and clicked Next) and clicked GOT IT.
6. Check Sync My Drive to this computer and set Folder location: to needed location (for example Z:\home\username\Google Drive as it was set for grive2). Note: if this path fails, then you can use C:\users\username\My Documents\Google Drive (which is really /home/username/Documents/Google Drive).
7. Click Start.
8. Wait for first sync and check status of tray icon - it should change from (Comparing or Syncing) to (Updated just now).

Optionally we can add Google Drive Sync to the autostart by copying its desktop icon to XDG autostart:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart/
cp ~/Desktop/Google\ Drive\ Sync.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

and then logout and login back to get it auto-started.

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Notes:

1. if we have grive and grive-tools installed - we need to remove them first with sudo apt-get purge grive grive-tools and sudo apt-get autoremove --purge.
2. on Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS with Nvidia driver to avoid Google Drive crash with err:winediag:xrandr12_init_modes Broken NVIDIA RandR detected, falling back to RandR 1.0. Please consider using the Nouveau driver instead. message in wine log we need to Configure wineprefix from PlayOnLinux – set on Display tab GLSL Support → disabled, Offscreen rendering mode → backbuffer.

Answer 2

I have recently started using VGrive on my Kubuntu 18.04 and I must say it does the job.

It is released under GPL V3 license. It has been originally developed for Elementary OS, but it is also available for Ubuntu either on Flathub :
https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.bcedu.vgrive
or as a .deb file on the author's GitHub repository :
https://github.com/bcedu/VGrive/releases

Basically, it allows synchronizing a local folder with your Google Drive via a simple graphical interface.

Some tests to give you an idea of how stable it is:

• I tried to put in my local folder a huge file (a 1.7 GB .iso file) and it never did the job. The client looked like it crashed, but I cannot know if Google Drive was ending the connection or not. It seems it was just stopping at some point ;
• Then I put 85 files locally, the biggest one being 19 MB, the total being 163 MB. They uploaded fine on Google Drive. Then I downloaded them from the Google Drive web interface and made a diff among them and the originally uploaded files. No difference found ;
• I modified one of the files locally. The change was detected and synchronized with Google Drive ;
• I uploaded a document in Google Drive directly. VGrive detected it and downloaded it ;
• My Google Docs were not synchronized, they just stayed on the Google Drive ;
• The files shared with me were not synchronized, they just stayed on the Google Drive ;
• Google Drive is slow, and VGrive is slow too :( Took about 1 hour to upload the 163 MB files from local folder, and then to generate the zip to download by Google Drive ;
• You can monitor what is synchronizing in the VGrive client by ticking "Advanced View". Notice that it is not parallelizing tasks, the client takes files one after the other and upload / download them sequentially.

So globally I find the experience quite nice, just too slow. It sounds perfect for using Google Drive as a file backup. I don't know how it would react if I was working on a big enough file locally, making regular saves at a pace that VGrive cannot follow. I also ignore what is the maximum reasonable size to synchronize.