Suggested settings to have an rclone-mounted Google Drive behave like Google's app

[cosmos]

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

This is not a problem, rather information for guidance. I use the original made-for-Windows Google Drive application on my Windows rigs, setup so that all files are on-disk. When, Google Drive starts it obviously makes an rsync of some sort uploading/downloading diffs.

On my Arch installation I’ve created a systemd user unit .mount file, with the following settings (some info redacted) :

[Unit]
Description=Mount for /home/user/gdrive

[Mount]
Type=rclone
What=gdrive:
Where=/home/user/gdrive
Options=rw,_netdev,args2env,vfs-cache-mode=full,vfs-cache-max-age=72h,vfs-cache-max-size=10G,vfs-cache-poll-interval=1m,vfs-read-chunk-size=128M,vfs-read-chunk-size-limit=off

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
~                          

I’ve also tried the above with Options set simply to:

Options=rw,_netdev,vfs-cache-mode=full

… with the same results (see below).

From my experience with rclone and to the best of my abilities (not a Linux/rclone expert guy here, just a newbie liking Linux here ) I can not make the rclone-based mount behave like the Google Drive one, in the sense that everything does exist locally and rclone should only sync diffs from time to time.

Even when opening 20-30Mb PDF files with Ocular it takes ages. This is where your advice is needed, if I can somehow make this rclone-based mount behave similarly to the actual Gdrive client.

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

$ rclone version
rclone v1.73.2
- os/version: arch (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.19.8-arch1-1 (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.26.1-X:nodwarf5
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none

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

Google Drive

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

No command issue - see initial description

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
[gdrive]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive = 
root_folder_id = XXX

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

Starting this up from a systemd unit file, don’t know how I can provide logs (or if they are needed in the scenario detailed).

[asdffdsa (jojothehumanmonkey)]

welcome to the forum,

@cosmos

I can not make the rclone-based mount behave like the Google Drive one, in the sense that everything does exist locally and rclone should only sync diffs from time to time.

that is how rclone mount works, cannot emulate the gdrive client.
this has been discussed a number of times in the forum.

note: --vfs-cache-mode=full, uses chunk downloads, so the entire file is not downloaded.
In this mode the files in the cache will be sparse files and rclone will keep track of which bits of the files it has downloaded.
So if an application only reads the starts of each file, then rclone will only buffer the start of the file.
These files will appear to be their full size in the cache, but they will be sparse files with only the data that has been downloaded present in them.

---

@cosmos

Even when opening 20-30Mb PDF files with Ocular it takes ages.
don’t know how I can provide logs (or if they are needed in the scenario detailed).

hard to know why, as no debug log was posted?
--log-level=DEBUG --log-file=/path/to/rclone.log

[nielash (Niel)]

@cosmos

behave like the Google Drive one, in the sense that everything does exist locally and rclone should only sync diffs from time to time.

Have you considered bisync?

One of the nice things about it is that it avoids all the complications of VFS/cache stuff, by just dealing with real, local files.

[cosmos]

@asdffdsa

that is how rclone works, cannot emulate the gdrive client.
this has been discussed a number of times in the forum.

note: --vfs-cache-mode=full, uses chunk downloads, so the entire file is not downloaded.
In this mode the files in the cache will be sparse files and rclone will keep track of which bits of the files it has downloaded.
So if an application only reads the starts of each file, then rclone will only buffer the start of the file.
These files will appear to be their full size in the cache, but they will be sparse files with only the data that has been downloaded present in them.

---

I’ve read these, but thanks. I was thinking that if one configured these chunks to be large enough, then files up to the chunk size would be read in their entirety. Something I’m missing here.

With regard to my comment about the logs: what I meant is that I did not experience something not running correctly, hence for not pasting any logs.

If you do consider that in this case logs are needed, please let me know, but please do consider that what might seem easy to you took an enormous effort on my part (creating an rclone setup on Linux, systemd units etc).

@nielash this bisync seems to be exactly what I’m looking for, thanks! Is it considered a stable/safe feature if configured correctly?

[asdffdsa (jojothehumanmonkey)]

@cosmos

but please do consider that what might seem easy to you took an enormous effort on my part (creating an rclone setup on Linux, systemd units etc).

fwiw, for testing, use the command line and a debug log.
once it all is working, then systemd.

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@cosmos

I was thinking that if one configured these chunks to be large enough, then files up to the chunk size would be read in their entirety. Something I’m missing here.

that is an assumption, not a guarantee that can be trusted.

---

in any event, hopefully bisync will solve your issue.
do you have enough free local space to store all the files in gdrive?

[cosmos]

@asdffdsa

fwiw, for testing, use the command line and a debug log.
once it all is working, then systemd.

That’s what I did from the start And it worked, it’s recently that I’ve realized that it is very slow (due to the way it operates, from what I understand).

@asdffdsa

in any event, hopefully bisync will solve your issue.
do you have enough free local space to store all the files in gdrive?

More than enough. My gdrive is the default one (less than 15Gb), so I’m good on that front.

Digging a bit deeper in bisync docs, it seems it is basically an rsync of VFSs of sorts. I’ll have to think about this approach and its merits compared to the mounted VFS approach.

Thanks everyone for the help, rclone is an awesome piece of software!

[asdffdsa (jojothehumanmonkey)]

@cosmos

15Gb
vfs-cache-max-size=10G
vfs-cache-max-age=72h

if you want all the files to stay in the cache.
vfs-cache-max-size=20G vfs-cache-max-age=9999y

in the forum, i have written about ways to force 100% of files and 100% of their contents into the cache.
for example,
rclone md5sum /home/user/gdrive --download

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fwiw, i have a summary of the two rclone caches