I found a rather easy way to somewhat daemonize rclone mount on Windows, so sharing it here.
We will be running rclone mount on system startup using an autostarted batch file. Usually, the console would remain visible, but there's a way to "daemonize" this (thus, no application in the foreground visible).
Note: You will have to modify the paths to SilentCMD.exe, rclone.exe (or add them to %PATH%), as well as the name of the remote and the bucket, if any needed.
Note: If you want to mount multiple remotes in different volumes, just add multiple such batch files each mounting a different volume. Or combine multiple remotes to show them all within a single volume.
@ncw is this method worth to mention in the rclone documentation?
There is some documentation, and it mentions --no-console as well as alternatives using task scheduler and setting up as windows service:
I haven't tried SilentCMD myself, but I think e.g. NirSoft AdvancedRun can be used in a similar setup. In general there are many alternatives and variants... Perhaps it a wiki page would be most appropriate (maybe there even is one already...)?
Ah, I see. I guess, I missed that one and only saw the solution using New-Service which in my case doesn't work even when running PowerShell in elevated mode and is a needless hassle. So, thanks for pointing both the --no-console as well as the autostart method in the documentation.
SilentCMD is not necessary with --no-console set. This works just as fine:
rclone.exe mount REMOTE: Z: -o volname=RemoteDrive --no-console --vfs-used-is-size --log-file "%TMP%\ZDriveMapperLog.txt"
So, I see no gain in mentioning the SilentCMD method in the documentation or wiki. Apart from adding a dependency to another tool, it gives no additional benefit. However, it would be nice to mention --no-console in rclone mount.
Also, in Install, the link to mount points to move instead. It's perhaps worth updating the link.
if i understand slientcmd, then the downsides are
--- silentcmd runs after the user has logged in.
whereas, task scheduler and nssm, can run before the user has logged in, at system startup.
--- have not been updated in three years.
anything from nirsoft is good.
to hide the console, i have used nircmd
Is it necessary for a simple mount with default settings and a log file? Is that option limits the size of log file? I mean, what is the reason to add --vfs-used-is-size in the code? I want to understand details and what I see at documentation is --vfs-used-is-size rclone size and not only --vfs-used-is-size without any size defined.
