Would rclone be faster than nfs over ssh tunnel?

Help and Support
1

I have the following setup. Running NFS over an ssh tunnel is very slow for the 1.3 TB & thousands of files I have.

synology box <---> NAT (work) <---> internet <---> NAT (home) <---> ubuntu server

I have a 1.3 TB share on the synology box that I want to represent with a 'virtual' file system on the ubuntu server (they're mostly music files). I currently run nfs over a reverse ssh tunnel to accomplish this (I cannot modify my work NAT, but I can port forward on my home NAT). My setup works, but it's really slow. I'm wondering if rclone might be faster for, for example, detecting changes in files, streaming them, etc? Many thanks in advance.

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

No problem - not yet installed.

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

Not yet installed.

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

None - synology box on one side, ubuntu box on the other.

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

none

The rclone config contents with secrets removed.

none

A log from the command with the -vv flag

none

2

hello and welcome to the forum,

on the synbox, have you tried using the sftp server?

just wanted to point out that rclone can emulate various file servers.
--- sftp
--- ftp
--- http
--- webdav
-- dlna

and on the synboxes i manage, i use tailscale point to point vpn.
can ssh into the synbox over the internet, no reverse tunnel needed.

1 Like
3

Thanks @asdffdsa - I've tried using sshfs - sftp, but I don't think it's any faster. So, can rclone present a virtual filesystem to linux, which streams upon access?
btw, tailscale looks very cool - hadn't seen it before, thanks.

4

yes, rclone mount

if nfs, sshfs and sftp all perform at the same approx speed, not sure what rclone can do about that.

fwiw, need to establish a baseline speed test between the synbox and the ubuntu server.

and might try running a vpn server, openvpn/wireguard at work, might help with doublenat.

5

sshfs is quite slow as it runs shell commands on the remote server to do stuff.

If you can use sftp that is a lot quicker, and rclone has a full featured sftp backend which you could then use with rclone mount.

Whether that is quicker than NFS I wouldn't like to guess, but in my experience NFS is quite slow, and anything tunneled over an ssh connection is slow, so I think it is a pretty low bar to jump!

6

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