Mergerfs vs rclone union

Off Topic
1

I'm wanting to combine the content of 2 folders, one local and one being a remote mount, into a third folder.

I've seen online a lot of mergerfs usage, but I see that rclone has a union backend.

My plan is to used the combined folder so that plex/emby/jellyfin read from it. I'm just curious if there are issues with a player reading from a union vs mergerfs, if mergerfs simply works better, or if the guides simply haven't considered changing because their setup just works.

Anyone have experience with them?

2

hi,
this is from forum member, @Animosity022, about mergerfs, rclone and plex.

take a read and if you have furhter questions, post them and @Animosity022 should be able to answer them.
https://github.com/animosity22/homescripts

3

As @asdffdsa shared, I use mergerfs. I have my flow/use case documented on my github.

I use mergerfs over rclone union specifically for hard links. I use Sonarr/Radarr to hardlink instead of making a double copy of something.

This assumes Linux as well as it's not available on Windows.

You'd have no issues with either as applications can read from both.

4

@asdffdsa, @Animosity022 thank you!

My setup is on Linux. This is my current structure,

 tree -L 2
.
├── @eaDir
│   └── @tmp
├── media
│   ├── Movies
│   ├── Music
│   └── Series
├── rclone
│   ├── Movies
│   ├── Music
│   └── Series
├── #recycle
│   └── desktop.ini
└── usenet
    ├── incomplete-downloads
    ├── Movies
    ├── Music
    ├── prowlarr
    ├── Series
    └── test_download_100MB

So current directory structure is setup so that Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr connect to SabNZB and download on /usenet. After downloading, it's set to move things over to the correct location on /media.

/rclone is just a staged directory for now where I'm planning on mounting the rclone remote.

Plan is to use another directory, maybe /combined, where things are then merged.

The main reason for asking is to see if I could use the same tool vs having to introduce another. Rclone being a single binary is super helpful and while it is Linux, it's running on a Synology which has some things that are done a bit different (sometimes enough to make you go nuts).

Looks like I'll give the rclone union remote a try first.

Thank you both for the help!

5

yes, i agree, but i have a number of topics in the forum, about using rclone on a synbox.
i have have a plan to create a wiki and/or how to guide.
if you have any specific questions, let me know

6

With rclone union, you lose the ability to hardlink and you'll have double data for Sonarr/Radarr.

My github has my work flow documented well and why I do things the way I do.

image
image795×116 16.8 KB

If I have to do a union, not sure I care if it's rclone or mergerfs doing it, but I do see the point of less things as that's my overall goal in my design. Less pieces. Simple.

The more pieces/things, the percentage of breaking goes up and more to troubleshoot.

I found that mergerfs gave me the best results as hard linking was more important for me.

I use a 1TB /local SSD to stage everything and eventually upload from there and things just fly.

7

What I did was enabled home folders, added a ~/scripts folder, and added that to my $PATH. I then installed rclone in ~/scripts (along with other small binary/scripts).

$ cat ~/.profile
export PATH="/var/services/homes/bobster/scripts:$PATH"
8

Ah,

Let me read through. Thank you!