But I had to come to the forums to figure this out. It seems like the rclone docs are focused on use cases where you'd install rclone, then run rclone config to set up a cloud connection or a remote.
I usually do that, but realized rclone is amazing for local directory sync as well over my LAN (to/from my NAS). So for discoverability, maybe the docs and/or the output itself (where it emits the annoying NOTICE) could mention "if you do not need to configure any remotes, you can simply create an empty config file in this location" or something like that?
Thanks for all your tireless work on this great utility
Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.
Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)
None (local transfers on LAN)
The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)
# The specific command I'm using:
rclone sync \
--exclude='**/._*' \
--exclude='.fcpcache/**' \
--multi-thread-streams=32 \
-P -L --metadata \
/Volumes/mercury/ /Volumes/Shuttle/Video_Projects
# Can also reproduce with this command:
rclone listremotes
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
2025/05/06 17:42:15 NOTICE: Config file "/Users/jgeerling/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
; empty config
### Double check the config for sensitive info before posting publicly
A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag
$ rclone listremotes
2025/05/06 17:41:17 NOTICE: Config file "/Users/jgeerling/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
I'm not sure what benefit that gives me, though... it just abstracts away the command I want to run, if I choose to use it (unless I'm missing something).
I have a local filepath /Volumes/mercury/ that I want to sync to /Volumes/Shuttle/Video_Projects.
Would I make the first path the local remote, or the second? Just having an empty file seems like it fills the need better than adding an abstraction to a local path.
First and foremost it allows you to encrypt your files on your local servers. Without the local remote you can't encrypt anything.
Second it creates the configuration file which most people are not going to know how to do otherwise. You understand how to do the touch command most people don't and it doesn't exist on Windows anyway.
As far as the syntax is concerned you would use the remote on both sides including the path as you have them now.
good point, so let's use rclone to create the dummy config file
@geerlingguy, lol, be prepared as you will have to be annoyed one last time ;wink
rclone touch %APPDATA%/rclone/rclone.conf
2025/05/07 11:07:02 NOTICE: Config file "C:\\Users\\user01\\AppData\\Roaming\\rclone\\rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
rclone touch ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
2025/05/07 11:10:12 NOTICE: Config file "/home/user01/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
Ah... never tried using rclone on Windows. Multi-platform is always so fun
For me, I'm using this to sync a working project directory to an external drive, I'd rather not have any encryption, I'm sure needs vary. I just don't see any benefit to setting up a remote in my case, just want the big scary NOTICE to go away.
If the answer is just 'don't add anything to the FAQ and rely on Google search for the few folks like me using this local-only, that's fine too.
I was just surprised the only references I could find to that message were in forum posts—and most of the posts with that text didn't have the simple answer I needed: just create an empty file at the path.
It's more for a cloud storage than local, but with so many additions, some people like to use it local to local. For me, I have other local only tools that work better for my use cases but everyone is differrent.
Out of curiousity, what does rclone give you, here, that rsync (which comes native with Linux and MacOS) doesn't? Or am I just showing my age using old old tools
Rsync is a single-threaded and rclone multi-threaded. Difference in transfer speed can be enormous given that I/O and network can cope. And for many small files rclone always wins, regardless of anything.
Rsync though is much more efficient when transferring large files with only limited changes, e.g. some database files (assuming that both ends have rsync installed). In such case rclone has to transfer all changed files when rsync can do delta transfer.
Indeed, as @kapitainsky mentioned, rclone has some massive benefits over rsync if you don't want to mess with xargs and piping copies through multiple potentially-obtuse stages, when you need to sync large amounts of files across local copies (in my case, local SSD to network NVMe volume, which rsync bottlenecks to around 350 MB/sec on my network, versus rclone saturating the 1+ GB/sec connection).
Interesting; I might have to do some testing between two Linux machines (using NFS). Only 1Gb networking, but it can be a few hundred Gb to sync (especially Sunday level 0 backups). OTOH it's still pretty fast compared to the much much slower upload to OneDrive for my offsite copy
EDIT TO ADD, after a level 0 rsync
Sun May 11 09:10:02 EDT 2025 Starting /offsite/BACKUP
sent 375,144,380,930 bytes received 13,207 bytes 103,075,805.51 bytes/sec
total size is 2,131,593,846,152 speedup is 5.68
Eh, that's not too bad for Gbit (especially since the sending machine is an old old core i5 750). I think I'll stick with rsync for that; it's worked for over a decade
