rclone

rclone is a CLI tool that makes it easier to manage and sync files and directories in cloud storage and remote systems. It’s officially supported by Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and many other services.

Common rclone use cases:

• Mounting a remote: Mount a remote storage system as a local filesystem using rclone mount.

• Filters and Exclusions: Use filters to include or exclude files based on patterns.

• Limit bandwidth on transfer: Limit the transfer rate to avoid using excessive bandwidth.

• Encrypt files and Cache: Use the crypt backend to encrypt files and the cache backend to cache files for faster access.

• Schedule Backups: Schedule rclone commands using cron jobs or other task scheduling mechanisms.

Let’s see in detail how to use rclone.

First, open a terminal window and launch

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ sudo apt update && sudo apt install rclone

This will install rclone in your system. Now it needs to be configured:

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone config

The configuration wizard will ask for the remote name, storage type, and credentials (whether they are API keys, authentication tokens, etc.), so be sure to check the instructions given by your provider and take note of these credentials. After that, rclone is ready to be used.

Basic Usage

Note

It’s good practice to test every command by attaching the --dry-run flag. After ensuring that everything is okay, repeat the command without --dry-run option.

1. List all of the remotes configured

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone listremotes

2. Copy files from source storage to destination storage

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone copy source:path dest:path

where source:path is the source storage and dest:path is the remote storage of destination (e.g a personal folder sent to a remote, or a file sent from a remote to another)

3. Sync storage

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone sync source:path dest:path

4. List all of the files in a remote

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone ls remote:path

5. Delete all files from a specific path in the remote

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ rclone delete remote:path