Guidance req: mount flags for GDrive remotes to emulate Windows gdrive client behavior

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

To be fair, it's not a problem, it's more of an advice request, as all the research I've done into mounting gdrive remotes is ... conflicting, at times, and I want some guidance.

Gentoo Linux on a dtpc, want to set up 3 mounts for 3 rclone remotes to 3 different gdrive accounts. The gdrive remotes are successfully up and tested.

I have been reading here in the forums as well as across the Internet for days, collating the various suggestions given, both for creating the mounts and daemonizing them (systemd). I'm curious if there is anything specific I need to do as I have a couple of caveats with my mount setup:

  1. All remotes will mount to /mnt/clouds/{cloudprovider}/{remotepath}. I'm doing this to keep that data out of ~ (and thus out of my ~ backups). In this case, path is /mnt/clouds/gdrive/{1,2,3}

  2. Said paths have been chowned to me and chmodded to 775 (both recursively). Need to know if this is even necessary or not (I think so, but not 100% sure, seeing the --dir-perms and --file-perms options' default values 777/666).

  3. I'm considering creating /.cache locations inside each {cloudprovider} path to handle cache data, but not sure if I need to keep cache separate for each remote, or if I can use a combined cache for each cloud provider. (see --cache-dir below)

I've come up with the following amalgamation of commands for mounting these 3 remotes (see below) and want to know if there is anything I'm missing.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

➜ rclone version
rclone v1.75.0

  • os/version: gentoo 2.18 (64 bit)
  • os/kernel: 7.1.2-p1-gentoo-dist-bin (x86_64)
  • os/type: linux
  • os/arch: amd64
  • go/version: go1.26.5
  • go/linking: static
  • go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive (for now)

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone mount {gdrive-1}: /mnt/clouds/gdrive/1 \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --dir-cache-time 8760h \
  --vfs-cache-max-age 24h \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size 16M \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit 2G \
  --cache-dir /mnt/clouds/gdrive/.cache \
  --dir-cache-time 1h
  --allow-other \
  --async-read=true \
  --buffer-size 32M \
  --rc \
  --daemon

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

➜ rclone config redacted
[gdrive-1]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive =

[gdrive-2]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive =

[gdrive-3]
type = drive
scope = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
token = XXX
team_drive =

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

Paste  log here

Inapplicable as I'm asking for advice before creating the mounts.

If there is anything I need to add, please let me know - I've been reading stuff on lunch breaks and after work hours, collating as much info as I can, along with bookmarking various sites, including posts here, the mount doc both here and at rclone UI, and also pages like Tanner Cude's blog, Ivan Morgillo's blog, Commander's Nout's Stacker News blog, OSTechNix blog, and more.

2

each mount must use its own cache, cannot share one cache with multiple mounts.

--dir-cache-time 1h
--dir-cache-time 8760h

you duplicated the flag twice.
since gdrive is a polling remote, use --dir-cache-time 8760h

should use a debug log and read it for issues.

that can create problems, perhaps use systemd.

i would suggest just a single mount command by using a combine remote.

[gdrives]
type = combine
upstreams = "gdrive-1=gdrive-1:" "gdrive-2=gdrive-2:" "gdrive-3=gdrive-3:"

rclone mount gdrives: /mnt/clouds/gdrives --cache-dir /mnt/clouds/.cache .....

3

Ahh, thanks for that. Will adjust accordingly.

Whoops - I missed the duplication, thanks!

Is one year too long of a cache time? I've seen anywhere from 1 week to 1 year, I want the ability to navigate the mount folder easily without causing issues for any given remote.

OK, I'll add that in.

I was also looking into that, I'll get my notes together and set that up.

Oooh, I thought about asking if I could do that. I'll read up on this more.

I read on another site that to create multiple mounts I should use multiple commands, and thus, multiple systemd service files. I just checked, and that page is from 13 years ago, so it makes sense that the info is outdated. So, using a combine remote should also allow me to create a single systemd service file to restart on boot, correct?

4

that is up to you, but it is not a problem.
add --vfs-refresh to the single systemd service file.

5

Thanks again. I'll work on getting all this together, including a debug log, and see how it all works.