I have a couple of questions about sharing google drive folders publically.
I understand I can share folders that don't contain encrypted folders via the google drive website.
If a google drive folder was shared via rclone, is it possible to do this via an rclone config and have it be read only, and not be changed to read/write by who it was given to?
A similar question to the one above, my folders currently aren't encrypted except one, but that's fine as I won't ever be sharing that one, but if I was wanting to potentially encrypted one of my other folders and then share it would that still be possible? or does the fact that it has now been encrypted take away some usability due to making sharing no longer possible?
These are hypothetical questions as I potentially may decide not to share a particular folder, but I am 50/50 at the moment.
You can share any folders at all. It doesn't matter if they are encrypted or not.
rclone does not share anything. You have to share via Google Drive. rclone is just a program that allows for access to it. If you share your rclone.conf, the person has the same access that you do.
What's your goal that you are trying to accomplish? Share a single folder read-only?
It kinda does, as sharing a folder that has been encrypted is fairly pointless as someone else using the google drive web UI, they can't read the files.
Oh you misunderstood, yes I am aware rclone itself doesn't share anything, but what I was trying to get at was if I was to encrypt one of my folders and then share this publically, but at the same time not reveal that I am the owner of the share or provide a direct URL link to the share, this could be achieved by sharing the rclone configuration for the share.
Sure I understand that, but what I was wondering was if I created a config that a restricted set of permissions, or be read-only could the person then change that config from read-only to read/write?
Is that possible to do? Share a single folder that has been encrypted as read-only?
I guess one such way would be to get web hosting, and set up an rclone mount to share the data via the web. Not my preferred solution however.
I mean, it comes down to use case. Why would you expect encrypting using a 3rd party tool and having the generic UI read that? That wouldn't be a good use case of using a 3rd party encryption tool.
It would whatever permissions that user has that was configured with the rclone.conf. You can share with view only or read only:
Sure. Share it as view only and provide them with the encryption passwords/salts to decrypt it. The assumption being if they can access the decrypted files, giving them the info to decrypt is valid.
Oh sorry this has been taken out of context, I wasn't suggesting that it should be possible, this was in reference to sharing folders via google drive web ui, this works fine but only when the folders aren't encrypted, once they are encrypted this method of sharing can no longer be used.
Ah I see, I hadn't thought of doing that, was more thinking of using the read-only setting within rclone itself.
The ideal perfect solution would be to have some kind of bundled solution, so that rclone was bundled into some kind of portable app, with the config and decryption keys all stored within a single exe, that the end user wasn't able to access or see, but was able to browse, view and potentially download files of interest.
Thanks I will have a think about what I might want to do, this was just a temporary thing whilst covid is going on.
