Rclone copy, few newbish questions

[tomH]

New rclone user with a couple of questions:

I'm trying to copy a directory and all of its contents to a backup folder on a FreeNAS NAS over SMB.
The source is macOS.

rclone copy "/Users/username/VirtualBox VMs" /Volumes/frn03-backup -P

It copies the contents, sub-directory and its files. How do I get it to copy the Parent directory?

....so I just discovered that if I append it to the end of the destination it will create it. Is that as designed?

Also what effect if any does adding removing trailing / have?

What would be the purpose in creating a local remote to use with this backup? Is it needed to mount?

Thanks for the info, this is a great resource!

[asdffdsa (jojothehumanmonkey)]

hello and welcome to the forum

@tomH

Is that as designed?

yes

as you have demonstrated, to copy files locally, non cloud, you do not need to create a local remote.

you would need a local remote for cache, crypt, and some other features.

[thestigma]

@tomH

How do I get it to copy the Parent directory?

You would need to change your command to:
rclone copy "/Users/username/VirtualBox VMs" "/Volumes/frn03-backup/VirtualBox VMs" -P
(note the change to the destination folder).
This might seems strange to you, but from a syntaxt perspective this is very logical. rclone will always work on the contents of whatever locations you specify and is consistent about doing this, so it should make sense after a bit of use

@tomH

....so I just discovered that if I append it to the end of the destination it will create it. Is that as designed?

Yes.
rclone work with files like Cloudsystems, and on those systems a folder is not an "item" really, but just more of a consequence of where files exist, sso rclone will create any missing folders to make the destination path you specified be valid.

@tomH

Also what effect if any does adding removing trailing / have?

None, as far as I know.

@tomH

What would be the purpose in creating a local remote to use with this backup? Is it needed to mount?

It is not needed to mount.
The purpose is mainly if you want to set non-standard options for a local remote, because to set options you need a remote config to put them in. This is usually not needed - but if you want to specify how rclone should deal with for example symlinks then it can be useful. Read in the Union remote documentation to see what options are there.