git-annex/ tips/ using box.com as a special remote

Box.com is a file storage service.

WebDAV access to box.com will be deprecated at some point in the near future (originally was scheduled to be January 31, 2019 - but it has been pushed back to a yet to be defined date). At that point, the method described on this page will no longer work. See this announcement for further details.

git-annex can use Box as a special remote. Recent versions of git-annex make this very easy to set up and use.

## git-annex setup

Create the special remote, in your git-annex repository. This example is non-encrypted; fill in your gpg key ID for a securely encrypted special remote!

    WEBDAV_USERNAME=you@example.com WEBDAV_PASSWORD=xxxxxxx git annex initremote box.com type=webdav url=https://dav.box.com/dav/git-annex chunk=50mb encryption=none

Note the use of chunking. Box has a limit on the maximum size of file that can be stored there (currently 256 MB). git-annex can break up large files into chunks to avoid the size limit. This needs git-annex version 3.20120303 or newer, which adds support for chunking.

Now git-annex can copy files to box.com, get files from it, etc, just like with any other special remote.

    % git annex copy bigfile --to box.com
    bigfile (to box.com...) ok
    % git annex drop bigfile
    bigfile (checking box.com...) ok
    % git annex get bigfile
    bigfile (from box.com...) ok

## exporting trees

By default, files stored in Box will show up there named by their git-annex key, not the original filename. If the filenames are important, you can run `git annex initremote` with an additional parameter "exporttree=yes", and then use git-annex-export to publish a tree of files to Box.

Note that chunking can't be used when exporting a tree of files, so Box's 250 mb limit will prevent exporting larger files.

# old davfs2 method

This method is deprecated, but still documented here just in case. Note that the files stored using this method cannot reliably be retreived using the webdav special remote.

## davfs2 setup

- First, install the davfs2 program, which can mount Box using WebDAV. On Debian, just `sudo apt-get install davfs2`
- Allow users to mount davfs filesystems, by ensuring that `/sbin/mount.davfs` is setuid root. On Debian, just `sudo dpkg-reconfigure davfs2`

- Add yourself to the davfs2 group.

        sudo adduser $(whoami) davfs2

- Edit `/etc/fstab`, and add a line to mount Box using davfs.

        sudo mkdir -p /media/box.com
        echo "https://dav.box.com/dav/  /media/box.com  davfs   noauto,user 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

- Create `~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf` with some important settings:

        mkdir ~/.davfs2/
        echo use_locks 0 > ~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf
        echo cache_size 1 >> ~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf
        echo delay_upload 0 >> ~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf

- Create `~/.davfs2/secrets`. This file contains your Box.com login and password. Your login is probably the email address you signed up with.

        echo "/media/box.com id@joeyh.name mypassword" > ~/.davfs2/secrets
        chmod 600 ~/.davfs2/secrets

- Now you should be able to mount Box, as a non-root user:

        mount /media/box.com

updated url for drive mount
I had to change the url in fstab to https://dav.box.com/dav
Comment by https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlmvi8Z-rUen8xIety5uiJitI5rnMrz8Jk — Wed Oct 29 14:05:27 2025
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