HOW TO FIX 2023 August: "Request had invalid authentication credentials" every week and found what was wrong

[xupetas]

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I was having weekly issues with some of my logins getting the dreaded "Request had invalid authentication credentials".
I had set the account to "production" but it was waiting for validation. If its still for validation, the "testing" rules apply, ie, the weekly need to re-authenticate my account.

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

rclone version
rclone v1.63.0

• os/version: opensuse-tumbleweed (64 bit)
• os/kernel: 4.18.0-477.15.1.el8_8.x86_64 (x86_64)
• os/type: linux
• os/arch: amd64
• go/version: go1.20.5
• go/linking: static
• go/tags: none

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

Google Drive

rclone move -v --config /root/.rclone.conf --bwlimit 7.00M --ignore-existing --drive-stop-on-upload-limit --update --transfers 6 --log-file /var/log/rclone-staging.log /mnt/slice1/upload GOOGLEDRIVE:/ingest

[GCD]
type = drive
client_id = 8XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXm
client_secret = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
scope = drive
token = {"access_token":"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX","expiry":"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"}

HOW TO FIX

My issue did pass by putting the account into production but it has to go immediately into production, ie bypassing verification. This can be achieved by setting only this two scopes for the APP inside of https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials:

--> ./auth/drive.file
--> ./auth/drive.install

Only this two, by not being "confidential" or "restricted" will allow the account to go immediately into production:

Sorry but my account was set by my admin friend to our native language but you can make the bridge.
Hope this helps

[kapitainsky]

read this post:

GDrive expiring after a week?

Depends how you configured client_id and client_secret: Keeping the application in "Testing" will work as well, but the limitation is that any grants will expire after a week, which can be annoying to refresh constantly. If, for whatever reason, a short grant time is not a problem, then keeping the application in testing mode would also be sufficient.

probably the same

[xupetas]

It was then. Since last week something changed in google drive. After one week the authentications for new client tokens die when they have "external-to-the-domain" access.
What i did solved my issue.

[kapitainsky]

It might be very useful indeed - for test I just refreshed my token and see.

google is google - they keep changing things.

[xupetas]

The token that was expiring was for a new client that was created just last month. I have very old clients that do not have the same issue - and hopefully they will never have.
I think it might be related to when the client auth was created, and not all clients in general.