Operation not permitted on rclone mount on macOS

hritik · September 2, 2025, 5:55am

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

After mounting an sshfs, ls says Operation not permitted but Finder works just fine.

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

rclone v1.71.0

os/version: darwin 15.3.2 (64 bit)
os/kernel: 24.3.0 (arm64)
os/type: darwin
os/arch: arm64 (ARMv8 compatible)
go/version: go1.25.0
go/linking: dynamic
go/tags: cmount

I've macfuse installed, version: 5.0.5

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

sshfs

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

rclone mount pi:/home/dietpi/immich/thumbs thumbs --allow-other --vfs-cache-mode full --umask=000 -vv  --log-file /tmp/rclone.log

The rclone config contents with secrets removed.

[pi]
type = sftp
host = XXX
user = XXX
key_file = ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
shell_type = unix
md5sum_command = md5sum
sha1sum_command = sha1sum

A log from the command with the `-vv` flag

rclone mount pi:/home/dietpi/immich/thumbs thumbs --allow-other --vfs-cache-mode full --umask=000 -vv  --log-file /tmp/rclone.log
2025/09/02 11:16:08 DEBUG : Setting --fast-list "false" from environment variable RCLONE_FAST_LIST="0"

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/Hritik14/e88a1b7303a97f3c5e00207309892c4b

log.txt

2025/09/02 11:14:51 NOTICE: --fast-list does nothing on a mount
2025/09/02 11:15:02 ERROR : thumbs: Unmounted rclone mount
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.71.0" starting with parameters ["rclone" "mount" "pi:/home/dietpi/immich/thumbs" "thumbs" "--allow-other" "--vfs-cache-mode" "full" "--umask=000" "-vv" "--log-file" "/tmp/rclone.log"]
2025/09/02 11:15:54 NOTICE: --fast-list does nothing on a mount
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "pi:/home/dietpi/immich/thumbs"
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : Using config file from "/Users/neo/.config/rclone/rclone.conf"
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : sftp://dietpi@100.99.177.100:22//home/dietpi/immich/thumbs: New connection 100.108.101.69:50116->100.99.177.100:22 to "SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_9.2p1 Debian-2+deb12u7"
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : sftp://dietpi@100.99.177.100:22//home/dietpi/immich/thumbs: Shell type "unix" from config
2025/09/02 11:15:54 DEBUG : sftp://dietpi@100.99.177.100:22//home/dietpi/immich/thumbs: Using root directory "/home/dietpi/immich/thumbs"
2025/09/02 11:15:54 INFO  : sftp://dietpi@100.99.177.100:22//home/dietpi/immich/thumbs: poll-interval is not supported by this remote

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kapitainsky · September 2, 2025, 9:19am

Uninstall macfuse and install fuse-t. It works much better IMO and does not require any kext.

Also try to give your shell full disk access. I think by default it is off.

hritik · September 2, 2025, 5:52pm

Thanks! This worked.
I removed macfuse in favour of fuse-t (not sure if it made a difference)

Adding iterm2 in Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Full Disk Acess fixed it !

As per this, needed to add sshd-keygen-wrapper as well but it was already there in my config.

kapitainsky · September 2, 2025, 6:12pm

The biggest advantage is that it does not require kernel extensions (deprecated by Apple already) and lowering OS security in order to use it. Otherwise it is exactly the same functionality as macfuse.

darthShadow · September 3, 2025, 5:04am

FWIW, that hasn’t been the case since v5 onwards. They now have a FSKit backend, which is even better than NFS and officially supported by Apple for mounting file systems.

It still seems to have some issues, which is why it’s not yet the default: FUSE Backends · macfuse/macfuse Wiki · GitHub

kapitainsky · September 3, 2025, 5:18am

Good to know that. Hopefully one day they (and Apple) will iron all issues - as for now the list seems to be quite long. Always good to have some alternatives.