Rclone serve restic fails with "Failed to create file system"

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1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I am using rclone as a server for restic with command "rclone serve restic ..."
I have set up two nearly identical Ubuntu 24 hosts: rs1 and rs2
First I have installed rs1 and then cloned it to rs2.

On rs1 rclone runs perfectly, on rs2 it fails with the error message (in rclone.log):

2025/05/21 15:32:53 Failed to create file system for "rs2:/home/restic/data/": didn't find section in config file

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

restic@rs2:~: rclone version
rclone v1.60.1-DEV
- os/version: ubuntu 24.04 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.8.0-60-generic (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.22.2
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none

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

local NFS:

restic@rs2:~: df -HT /home/restic/data
Filesystem                        Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tik-nfs-test:/tik_nfs_test_restic nfs    11T  121G   11T   2% /nfs/restic

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

/usr/bin/rclone serve restic --addr rs2.tik.uni-stuttgart.de:8000 --log-file /home/restic/rclone.log --log-level NOTICE --min-tls-version tls1.3 --htpasswd /home/restic/data/.htpasswd --private-repos --cert /home/restic/data/public_key --key /home/restic/data/private_key rs2:/home/restic/data/

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' is not availbe with Ubuntu 24, I am cnot able to upgrade it.

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

2025/05/21 15:51:45 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.60.1-DEV" starting with parameters ["/usr/bin/rclone" "-vv" "serve" "restic" "--addr" "rs2.tik.uni-stuttgart.de:8000" "--log-file" "/home/restic/rclone.log" "--min-tls-version" "tls1.3" "--htpasswd" "/home/restic/data/.htpasswd" "--private-repos" "--cert" "/home/restic/data/public_key" "--key" "/home/restic/data/private_key" "rs2:/home/restic/data/"]
2025/05/21 15:51:45 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "rs2:/home/restic/data/"
2025/05/21 15:51:45 DEBUG : Using config file from "/home/restic/.config/rclone/rclone.conf"
2025/05/21 15:51:45 Failed to create file system for "rs2:/home/restic/data/": didn't find section in config file

After copying the last output I have found a problem:

restic@rs2:~: cat .config/rclone/rclone.conf
[rs1]
type = local
copy_links = true
case_sensitive = true
no_preallocate = true

The tag [rs1] is wrong, it should be [rs2] !

After changing [rs1] to [rs2] I am able to start rclone in restic server mode

Now my question is: which command has created $HOME/.config/rclone/rclone.conf ?

Probably I have done it by myself but forgot to write it into my documentation.

2

welcome to the forum,

rclone config

that is a many years old, custom compiled, dev version of rclone from an out of date repository.

  1. uninstall the ancient version
  2. https://rclone.org/install/#script-installation
  3. test again
3

Thanks, "rclone config" was missing in my local documentation. My fault...
Is there a guide/howto for using rclone as a restic server?

Regarding the (old) rclone version:

root@rs2:~# rclone version
rclone v1.60.1-DEV
- os/version: ubuntu 24.04 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.8.0-60-generic (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.22.2
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none

root@rs2:~# type rclone
rclone is hashed (/usr/bin/rclone)

root@rs2:~# dpkg -S /usr/bin/rclone
rclone: /usr/bin/rclone

root@rs2:~# apt show rclone
Package: rclone
Version: 1.60.1+dfsg-3ubuntu0.24.04.2
Priority: optional
Section: universe/net
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Debian Go Packaging Team <team+pkg-go@tracker.debian.org>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 62.6 MB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34)
Suggests: fuse | fuse3, ca-certificates
Homepage: https://github.com/rclone/rclone
Download-Size: 16.5 MB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates/universe amd64 Packages

As you can see: this is the official package from Ubuntu, for which one get automatic updates.
If I install another version, I would have to check manually for security updates.

4

Well... They have not updated this package since 2022. So good luck with automatic updates (there were 20+ rclone releases since then).

If you don't, you will have to deal with all issues of this outdated rclone yourself. Your call.

5

Clearly this package isn't being updated. I think you're on an LTS version of Ubuntu so it's not clear if Ubuntu will do anything to keep this version up to date (LTS versions are normally wary of "breaking changes"), but it's also not clear that Ubuntu are maintaining this at all; it may have just been a "one and done" type deal. I'm not confident that Ubuntu are even backporting security patches (the changelog at https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/universe/r/rclone/rclone_1.60.1+dfsg-4/changelog doesn't fill me with confidence). Even the 25.04 version of rclone is 1.60.1

If you want to stick with Ubuntu provided versions you'll need to raise a ticket to Ubuntu to ask them to refresh the package, but this may still run the risk of missing updates as rclone improves.

Personally, I wouldn't use the Ubuntu version and would run my own. If you're worried about keeping things updated then a weekly cron job with something like % rclone selfupdate --check will alert you if there are new versions.

1 Like
6

Ubuntu is full of outdated packages. Only core ones are kept updated and huge number looks like is only included (rclone among them) to justify claim how many packages this distro includes. In other words for PR only.

This was one of the reasons I moved away from this distro and nowadays mainly use SUSE Tumbleweed rolling one when I need Linux workstation.

In terms of rclone - it is single binary. There is no risk (really 0%) in downloading it directly from rclone official site. It does not install any dependencies, does not modify any system settings etc.

7

When you set up rclone on rs1 you likely created remote called "rs1" that got saved in the config file. If you then copy that config file to another computer it still has one remote called "rs1". The config file which by default resides at $HOME/.config/rclone/rclone.conf is a text file containing information about the remotes you configure with rclone config. (As you may have noticed) that configuration file can also be modified with a text editor. It can exist elsewhere if you want, the flag (that can be added to almost any command) is --config <path/to/config/file>