Hello,
I have just given the docker volume rclone plugin a go (Docker Compose on Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS). How fantastic it is. I have followed the docker volume page (Docker Volume Plugin) and have my rclone SFTP (see in TLDR section for config) remote mount created and available to the containers I attach it to without issue, and with healthchecks implemented.
For example:
Included with the service
volumes:
- 'qbittorrent:/downloads:rw'
healthcheck:
test: ls /downloads/qbittorrent/completed || exit 1
interval: 1m
timeout: 15s
retries: 3
start_period: 15s
volume
volumes:
qbittorrent:
driver: rclone
driver_opts:
remote: saltbox:/mnt/unionfs/downloads/torrents/
allow_other: 'true'
vfs_cache_mode: 'off'
Question: Is there a way to have the rclone webui setup via this method? Or is there a way to have an rclone docker instance connect to and list this remote? Are options like --rc-web-ui, --rc-addr, --rc-user even available in this plugin/compose context?
Some backstory (This is very TLDR worthy, feel free to skip, but just for some context):
Have been using rclone for years on UnRaid without issue - both with a google remote and an SFTP remote mount (to a dedicated server with a Qbittorrent download client). I am now making the move to docker compose on a Ubuntu Server (24.04 LTS) VM. My main motivation with rclone has been for my PVR docker containers (Lidarr/Radarr/Sonarr) to import content from my dedicated server (via an Rclone SFTP mount), without my intervention, as content is sent to my remote download client and downloaded. I achieved this with rclone being mounted on the host volume with this as my config:
[saltbox]
type = sftp
host = [Domain of my Hetzner dedicated server]
user = [...user]
pass = [...pass]
shell_type = unix
md5sum_command = md5sum
sha1sum_command = sha1sum
key_file_pass = [...key_file_pass]
I would then mount the rclone remote to the host system via various means. My latest method has been fully via docker using this.
And I would point my PVR to it with a volume mount, for example:
docker-compose.yml
- '${RCLONE_MOUNT}:/downloads:rw'
.env
RCLONE_MOUNT=/mnt/sftp/qbittorrent (where I mounted my remote on VM host)
I would then add my remote download client to the PVR and sync up their paths using remote path mappings:
Host - qbittorrent.[Hetzner Domain]
Remote Path: [Where Qbittorrent moves completed downloads on remote server]
Local Path: /downloads/qbittorrent/completed/
I had this working great for a few years without issue, or so I thought. I just let it do its thing, and relied on my PVRs to tell me if a file was successfully imported. I didn't look at logs, never used the rclone webui, and Files would appear in my folder after sometime.
This all changed when I set up rclone/mount via docker, when I could observe transfer speeds and, importantly, any errors. And this shift allowed me to see a rare situation where the PVR would mark an incomplete file transfer as successfully imported. Basically, I noticed two checksum errors reported in the rclone gui. I then noticed that these two files were reported as successfully imported (they had been moved to the media folder and renamed accordingly by the PVR client). And sure enough, the PVR had moved them as they were being transferred by rclone, which interrupted the transfer and caused the errors. While my brain was quick to worry about dying hardware or rclone being the culprit, it was quite a simple and fixable problem. These downloads had one thing in common: they were archived files. I rarely download any content that is archived so it had slipped under my radar, previously. Qbittorrent would begin extracting the archived file to the completed download folder and then the PVR would begin trying to import the file during the extraction process. I have run into this problem before years back, and it is easily fixed by using 'unpackerr' to get the PVR to wait until successful extraction.
So with all that wall of text said - I would love to keep using the rclone webui with the docker rclone volume plugin.