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Cheatsheets

Practical command references for Linux, networking, servers, containers, databases, and more.

Cheatsheet#rclone

Rclone

rclone syncs files to over 40 cloud storage providers (S3, Google Drive, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, OneDrive).

Basic Configuration & Listing

# Interactive setup for cloud storage remotes
rclone config
 
# List files in remote bucket/drive
rclone ls remote_gdrive:backup_folder
 
# List directories only
rclone lsd remote_gdrive:
 
# Show total size and file count
rclone size remote_gdrive:backup_folder

Copy & Sync Operations

# Copy files (only adds/updates, does not delete files in remote)
rclone copy /var/backups remote_gdrive:server_backups --progress
 
# Mirror sync (WARNING: Deletes files in remote if deleted locally)
rclone sync /var/www remote_s3:mybucket/www --progress --interactive
 
# Sync with bandwidth limiting (e.g., max 5 Megabytes per second)
rclone sync /src remote:dst --bwlimit 5M
 
# Sync with limited parallel transfers (good for slow APIs/CPUs)
rclone sync /src remote:dst --transfers 4 --checkers 8

Mounting Cloud Storage

You can mount any cloud storage bucket as a local disk folder.

# Mount cloud storage locally as a filesystem
rclone mount remote_gdrive: /mnt/gdrive \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --daemon \
  --allow-other
 
# Unmount the drive
fusermount -u /mnt/gdrive

Rclone Crypt (On-the-fly Encryption)

If you don't trust the cloud provider, you can encrypt filenames and contents before they leave your server.

  1. Run rclone config
  2. Create a new remote of type crypt
  3. Point the crypt remote to an existing subfolder in a real remote (e.g., remote_gdrive:secret_backups)
  4. Set a strong password.
# Sync files to the encrypted remote
rclone sync /local/secret/files secure_remote:
 
# Files stored in Google Drive will appear as garbled names and encrypted bytes, 
# but locally via rclone they decrypt transparently.