connecting to a different google drive than the one logged into google colab

Question

recently colab removed the ability to connect to google drive from different accounts other than the one you were logged into in google drive. There was a workaround someone posted with the following code which worked great, until now...

!apt-get install -y -qq software-properties-common python-software-properties module-init-tools
!add-apt-repository -y ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa 2>&1 > /dev/null
!apt-get update -qq 2>&1 > /dev/null
!apt-get -y install -qq google-drive-ocamlfuse fuse
from google.colab import auth
auth.authenticate_user()
from oauth2client.client import GoogleCredentials
creds = GoogleCredentials.get_application_default()
import getpass
!google-drive-ocamlfuse -headless -id={creds.client_id} -secret={creds.client_secret} < /dev/null 2>&1 | grep URL
vcode = getpass.getpass()
!echo {vcode} | google-drive-ocamlfuse -headless -id={creds.client_id} -secret={creds.client_secret}
%cd /content
!mkdir gdrive
%cd gdrive
!mkdir "My Drive"
%cd ..
%cd ..
!google-drive-ocamlfuse "/content/gdrive/My Drive"

the auth.authenticate_user() line now gives a popup that resembles the recently updated normal authentication process giving this popup I go through the process and log into my other account and I am met with this message. is there any workaround to this?

the reason this matters is that I have unlimited storage on my edu account for free but I couldn't get my edu account to work the paid version of colab due to security restrictions on my universities system, hence I use a payed colab on my personal account and store my data on the edu account

Answer 1

edit: do it all in one cell without printing unneeded information edit2 april 28th 2022: changed !sudo apt install google-drive-ocamlfuse >/dev/null 2>&1 to a new line because sudo apt update was failing on colab and preventing it from running the install line.

!sudo echo -ne '\n' | sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa >/dev/null 2>&1 # note: >/dev/null 2>&1 is used to supress printing
!sudo apt update >/dev/null 2>&1
!sudo apt install google-drive-ocamlfuse >/dev/null 2>&1
!google-drive-ocamlfuse
!sudo apt-get install w3m >/dev/null 2>&1 # to act as web browser 
!xdg-settings set default-web-browser w3m.desktop >/dev/null 2>&1 # to set default browser 
%cd /content
!mkdir gdrive
%cd gdrive
!mkdir "My Drive"
!google-drive-ocamlfuse "/content/gdrive/My Drive"

then just click the link Failure("Error opening URL:https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?client_id=56492... and authorize your account

---

I found one solution I am not sure how fast it it in terms of connection to grive etc but it mounts at least. I figured this out thanks to link1, link2 first run this, you'll be promted to (click in the box) and then click enter

!sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa
!sudo apt update
!sudo apt install google-drive-ocamlfuse
!google-drive-ocamlfuse

you'll see this output pictured below, just click the link and authorize your account.

next for some reason you'll need to install a browser, even though you already authorized your account, so run this

!sudo apt-get install w3m # to act as web browser 
!xdg-settings set default-web-browser w3m.desktop # to set default browser 

finally mount it

%cd /content
!mkdir gdrive
%cd gdrive
!mkdir "My Drive"
!google-drive-ocamlfuse "/content/gdrive/My Drive"

you should see