HOW TO: Access Google Drive for Ubuntu ?

Google Drive the cloud storage by Google released today and it is available only for PC, Mac and Android smartphones. iPhone and iPad versions are yet to be released but there is no information about Google Drive for Linux. We still can access Google Drive in Ubuntu by following few steps in Nautilus. We will use Google Docs Fs PPA project by Luca Invernizzi, which is actually meant for Google Docs to connect to our Google Drive free cloud storage space. This method originally posted at OMGUbuntu and gives a temporary method to access Google Drive in Ubuntu OS until, Google releases the official Linux version.

[youtube width=”600″ height=”344″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKJ9KzGQq0w[/youtube]

When you use Google Drive unofficially in your Linux system, this really contains so many limitations. You can just access your GDrive storage and store files, but the auto sync feature will not work like few other features of it. We will be updating this article once the full working method released for Linux machines. The following steps are followed in Ubuntu 11.10.

Google Drive for Ubuntu

Step 1: Download all the packages that you can find here by Luca Invernizzi and proceed to second step.

Step 2: Add the following package

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:invernizzi/google-docs-fs
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-docs-fs

Step 3: Once the installation completed, logout and login again to your Ubuntu Desktop.

Step 4: Now open “Nautilus” and Create a New Folder in your “Home” folder as “Drive”.

Step 5: Access “Terminal” and type the following command

(replace the username with your google account detail to access your Google Drive)

Step 6: You must see a prompt for Password, and give your google account password to complete the steps and you must be seeing the Google Drive with your Free Cloud Storage now mounted as a Virtual Drive.

google drive linux

As it is mentioned, this is a temporary solution to access and store your docs, pictures and files on Google Drive. We must wait for the official release of Google Drive for Linux by Google. The disappointing part is, google has mentioned nowhere about the status of Google Drive for Linux in their webpage.

Thanks for reading and please do share this post with your friends in Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

About the Author: Robin C

Security Consultant, Engineer, Technology Enthusiast and Blogger.

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9 Comments

  1. It will be great if google drive will work on linux. Meanwhile dropbox offers a better solution for all platforms.

  2. I have a feeling that this is a completely simple question but the terminal says it doesn’t know the ‘gmount’ command? is there some specific package i need to install that makes this command available?

    1. gumount 😉
      or fusermount -u.
      but – for me gmount doesn’t work now. i receive:

      undefine@uml:~$ gmount gtest/ [email protected]
      Password:
      undefine@uml:~$ ls gtest
      ls: czytanie katalogu gtest: Zły argument
      undefine@uml:~ 2 $ export LC_ALL=C
      undefine@uml:~$ ls gtest
      ls: reading directory gtest: Invalid argument

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