Hi, I have Rclone and onedrive_cli installed, I am wondering why Rclone is 10x-20x slower in opening a OneDrive folder. This is how I mount the drive:
sh -c "rclone mount onedrive: ~/OneDrive --vfs-cache-mode full --cache-dir /tmp/rclone-cache --dir-cache-time 720h --vfs-cache-max-age 720h --buffer-size 128M --vfs-read-ahead 128M --transfers 8 --volname OneDrive"
I notice that on a Terminal the ls command like the following is very snappy.
$ rclone ls onedrive:/Thesis
It is in the file managers (tried it with Nemo and Nautilus) that the tremendous slowness manifest. onedrive_cli also exposes a pseudo OneDrive in Files Maager, it is sluggish but still 10x to 20x faster than Rclone.
Configuration below:
Zorin OS 18.1 Core
rclone v1.73.5
os/version: debian trixie/sid (64 bit)
os/kernel: 6.17.0-22-generic (x86_64)
os/type: linux
os/arch: amd64
go/version: go1.25.9
go/linking: static
go/tags: none
[onedrive]
type = onedrive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
token = XXX
drive_id = XXX
drive_type = personal
client_id and client_secret was obtained via app registration in OneDrive console.
If so, I don't think that it is a fair comparison.
Rclone in this case is mounting the OneDrive as if it was an external hard drive somewhere in the cloud. Everything in your OneDrive has to be processed in real time in the local file manager over the internet.
The OneDrive client that I listed above automatically by default synchronizes all of your OneDrive files down to your local Linux computer making it extremely fast. It's not mounting the files it's actually retrieving all of them in advance.
Of course it's going to be faster a lot faster. it's also going to consume local disc storage.
I also noticed, the “ls” command in Terminal is doing a recursive depth first traversal of the entire file system, listing EVERY folders and files stored OneDrive. Is that the reason why it is running so slow in File Manager?
onedrive_cli is only exposing a virtual link in File Manager, it is not downloading and storing anything in local computer. See my other reply, Rclone “ls” command is recursively traversing down the target folder. I think that is why it is so impossibly slow in file managers.
Thanks for the updated information. I haven't installed that OneDrive client because Microsoft kept complaining during authentication at something like a password was being passed in the browser and it aborted. I tried authenticating with three different browsers including Edge and two different operating systems.
Anyway my research of the product that I mentioned and you didn't confirm that I was referring to that specific product it suggests in its documentation that it is going to sync files to your PC not just a pointer to the directory tree.
Are you using the exact same product as I have in my post above? It is important that we are referring to the same OneDrive client software.
I found another OneDrive app called onedriver. Is it possible that this is the app that you are using? It claims to be a tree view only not synchronization but I can't get it to work.
Also, I'm researching Rclone Flags right now and I think I might have some suggestions for you. If the software can indeed do what my research has suggested it can things will speed up substantially for you while using rclone.
I'm just about done putting my notes together and then I'm going to test it. Results good or bad I will let you know but my research again suggests that there is a way to speed up what you're doing. Actually if what I'm discovering works correctly I'm going to start using them myself.