Rclone

Sync files and directories to and from

• Google Drive
• Amazon S3
• Openstack Swift / Rackspace cloud files / Memset Memstore
• The local filesystem

Features

• MD5SUMs checked at all times for file integrity
• Timestamps preserved on files
• Partial syncs supported on a whole file basis
• Copy mode to just copy new/changed files
• Sync mode to make a directory identical
• Check mode to check all MD5SUMs
• Can sync to and from network, eg two different Drive accounts

Home page

• http://rclone.org/

Install

Rclone is a Go program and comes as a single binary file.

Download the relevant binary from

• http://www.craig-wood.com/nick/pub/rclone/

Or alternatively if you have Go installed use

go get github.com/ncw/rclone

and this will build the binary in $GOPATH/bin.

You can then modify the source and submit patches.

Configure

First you'll need to configure rclone. As the object storage systems have quite complicated authentication these are kept in a config file .rclone.conf in your home directory by default. (You can use the -config option to choose a different config file.)

The easiest way to make the config is to run rclone with the config option, Eg

rclone config

Here is an example of making an s3 configuration

$ rclone config
No remotes found - make a new one
n) New remote
q) Quit config
n/q> n
name> remote
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) swift
 2) s3
 3) local
 4) drive
type> 2
AWS Access Key ID.
access_key_id> accesskey
AWS Secret Access Key (password). 
secret_access_key> secretaccesskey
Endpoint for S3 API.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 * The default endpoint - a good choice if you are unsure.
 * US Region, Northern Virginia or Pacific Northwest.
 * Leave location constraint empty.
 1) https://s3.amazonaws.com/
 * US Region, Northern Virginia only.
 * Leave location constraint empty.
 2) https://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com
[snip]
 * South America (Sao Paulo) Region
 * Needs location constraint sa-east-1.
 9) https://s3-sa-east-1.amazonaws.com
endpoint> 1
Location constraint - must be set to match the Endpoint.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 * Empty for US Region, Northern Virginia or Pacific Northwest.
 1) 
 * US West (Oregon) Region.
 2) us-west-2
[snip]
 * South America (Sao Paulo) Region.
 9) sa-east-1
location_constraint> 1
--------------------
[remote]
access_key_id = accesskey
secret_access_key = secretaccesskey
endpoint = https://s3.amazonaws.com/
location_constraint = 
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y
Current remotes:

Name                 Type
====                 ====
remote               s3

e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> q

This can now be used like this

rclone lsd remote: - see all buckets/containers
rclone ls remote: - list a bucket
rclone sync /home/local/directory remote:bucket

See the next section for more details.

Usage

Rclone syncs a directory tree from local to remote.

Its basic syntax is like this

Syntax: [options] subcommand <parameters> <parameters...>

See below for how to specify the source and destination paths.

Subcommands

rclone copy source:path dest:path

Copy the source to the destination. Doesn't transfer unchanged files, testing first by modification time then by MD5SUM. Doesn't delete files from the destination.

rclone sync source:path dest:path

Sync the source to the destination. Doesn't transfer unchanged files, testing first by modification time then by MD5SUM. Deletes any files that exist in source that don't exist in destination. Since this can cause data loss, test first with the -dry-run flag.

rclone ls [remote:path]

List all the objects in the the path.

rclone lsd [remote:path]

List all directoryes/objects/buckets in the the path.

rclone mkdir remote:path

Make the path if it doesn't already exist

rclone rmdir remote:path

Remove the path. Note that you can't remove a path with objects in it, use purge for that.

rclone purge remote:path

Remove the path and all of its contents.

rclone check source:path dest:path

Checks the files in the source and destination match. It compares sizes and MD5SUMs and prints a report of files which don't match. It doesn't alter the source or destination.

General options:

• -config Location of the config file
• -transfers=4: Number of file transfers to run in parallel.
• -checkers=8: Number of MD5SUM checkers to run in parallel.
• -dry-run=false: Do a trial run with no permanent changes
• -modify-window=1ns: Max time difference to be considered the same - this is automatically set usually
• -quiet=false: Print as little stuff as possible
• -stats=1m0s: Interval to print stats
• -verbose=false: Print lots more stuff

Developer options:

• -cpuprofile="": Write cpu profile to file

Local Filesystem

Paths are specified as normal filesystem paths, so

rclone sync /home/source /tmp/destination

Will sync source to destination

Swift / Rackspace cloudfiles / Memset Memstore

Paths are specified as remote:container (or remote: for the lsd command.)

So to copy a local directory to a swift container called backup:

rclone sync /home/source swift:backup

The modified time is stored as metadata on the object as X-Object-Meta-Mtime as floating point since the epoch.

This is a defacto standard (used in the official python-swiftclient amongst others) for storing the modification time (as read using os.Stat) for an object.

Amazon S3

Paths are specified as remote:bucket

So to copy a local directory to a s3 container called backup

rclone sync /home/source s3:backup

The modified time is stored as metadata on the object as X-Amz-Meta-Mtime as floating point since the epoch.

Google drive

Paths are specified as drive:path Drive paths may be as deep as required.

The initial setup for drive involves getting a token from Google drive which you need to do in your browser. The rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called drv

$ ./rclone config
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> n
name> drv
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) swift
 2) s3
 3) local
 4) drive
type> 4
Google Application Client Id - leave blank to use rclone's.
client_id> 
Google Application Client Secret - leave blank to use rclone's.
client_secret> 
Remote config
Go to the following link in your browser
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?access_type=&approval_prompt=&client_id=XXXXXXXXXXXX.apps.googleusercontent.com&redirect_uri=urn%3XXXXX%3Awg%3Aoauth%3XX.0%3Aoob&response_type=code&scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fdrive&state=state
Log in, then type paste the token that is returned in the browser here
Enter verification code> X/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXX-XXXXX_XXXXXXX_XXXXXXX
--------------------
[drv]
client_id = 
client_secret = 
token = {"AccessToken":"xxxx.xxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","RefreshToken":"1/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","Expiry":"2014-03-16T13:57:58.955387075Z","Extra":null}
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

You can then use it like this

rclone lsd drv:
rclone ls drv:

To copy a local directory to a drive directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source drv:backup

Google drive stores modification times accurate to 1 ms.

License

This is free software under the terms of MIT the license (check the COPYING file included in this package).

Bugs

• Doesn't sync individual files yet, only directories.
• Drive: Sometimes get: Failed to copy: Upload failed: googleapi: Error 403: Rate Limit Exceeded
  • quota is 100.0 requests/second/user
• Empty directories left behind with Local and Drive
  • eg purging a local directory with subdirectories doesn't work

Contact and support

The project website is at:

• https://github.com/ncw/rclone

There you can file bug reports, ask for help or contribute patches.

Authors

• Nick Craig-Wood nick@craig-wood.com

Contributors

• Your name goes here!