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Local Filesystem Rclone docs for the local filesystem

{{< icon "fas fa-hdd" >}} Local Filesystem

Local paths are specified as normal filesystem paths, e.g. /path/to/wherever, so

rclone sync -i /home/source /tmp/destination

Will sync /home/source to /tmp/destination.

Configuration

For consistencies sake one can also configure a remote of type local in the config file, and access the local filesystem using rclone remote paths, e.g. remote:path/to/wherever, but it is probably easier not to.

Modified time

Rclone reads and writes the modified time using an accuracy determined by the OS. Typically this is 1ns on Linux, 10 ns on Windows and 1 Second on OS X.

Filenames

Filenames should be encoded in UTF-8 on disk. This is the normal case for Windows and OS X.

There is a bit more uncertainty in the Linux world, but new distributions will have UTF-8 encoded files names. If you are using an old Linux filesystem with non UTF-8 file names (e.g. latin1) then you can use the convmv tool to convert the filesystem to UTF-8. This tool is available in most distributions' package managers.

If an invalid (non-UTF8) filename is read, the invalid characters will be replaced with a quoted representation of the invalid bytes. The name gro\xdf will be transferred as gro‛DF. rclone will emit a debug message in this case (use -v to see), e.g.

Local file system at .: Replacing invalid UTF-8 characters in "gro\xdf"

Restricted characters

With the local backend, restrictions on the characters that are usable in file or directory names depend on the operating system. To check what rclone will replace by default on your system, run rclone help flags local-encoding.

On non Windows platforms the following characters are replaced when handling file names.

Character Value Replacement
NUL 0x00 ␀
/ 0x2F ／

When running on Windows the following characters are replaced. This list is based on the Windows file naming conventions.

Character Value Replacement
NUL 0x00 ␀
SOH 0x01 ␁
STX 0x02 ␂
ETX 0x03 ␃
EOT 0x04 ␄
ENQ 0x05 ␅
ACK 0x06 ␆
BEL 0x07 ␇
BS 0x08 ␈
HT 0x09 ␉
LF 0x0A ␊
VT 0x0B ␋
FF 0x0C ␌
CR 0x0D ␍
SO 0x0E ␎
SI 0x0F ␏
DLE 0x10 ␐
DC1 0x11 ␑
DC2 0x12 ␒
DC3 0x13 ␓
DC4 0x14 ␔
NAK 0x15 ␕
SYN 0x16 ␖
ETB 0x17 ␗
CAN 0x18 ␘
EM 0x19 ␙
SUB 0x1A ␚
ESC 0x1B ␛
FS 0x1C ␜
GS 0x1D ␝
RS 0x1E ␞
US 0x1F ␟
/ 0x2F ／
" 0x22 ＂
* 0x2A ＊
: 0x3A ：
< 0x3C ＜
> 0x3E ＞
? 0x3F ？
\ 0x5C ＼
| 0x7C ｜

File names on Windows can also not end with the following characters. These only get replaced if they are the last character in the name:

Character Value Replacement
SP 0x20 ␠
. 0x2E ．

Invalid UTF-8 bytes will also be replaced, as they can't be converted to UTF-16.

Paths on Windows

On Windows there are many ways of specifying a path to a file system resource. Local paths can be absolute, like C:\path\to\wherever, or relative, like ..\wherever. Network paths in UNC format, \\server\share, are also supported. Path separator can be either \ (as in C:\path\to\wherever) or / (as in C:/path/to/wherever). Length of these paths are limited to 259 characters for files and 247 characters for directories, but there is an alternative extended-length path format increasing the limit to (approximately) 32,767 characters. This format requires absolute paths and the use of prefix \\?\, e.g. \\?\D:\some\very\long\path. For convenience rclone will automatically convert regular paths into the corresponding extended-length paths, so in most cases you do not have to worry about this (read more below).

Note that Windows supports using the same prefix \\?\ to specify path to volumes identified by their GUID, e.g. \\?\Volume{b75e2c83-0000-0000-0000-602f00000000}\some\path. This is not supported in rclone, due to an issue in go.

Long paths

Rclone handles long paths automatically, by converting all paths to extended-length path format, which allows paths up to 32,767 characters.

This conversion will ensure paths are absolute and prefix them with the \\?\. This is why you will see that your paths, for instance .\files is shown as path \\?\C:\files in the output, and \\server\share as \\?\UNC\server\share.

However, in rare cases this may cause problems with buggy file system drivers like EncFS. To disable UNC conversion globally, add this to your .rclone.conf file:

[local]
nounc = true

If you want to selectively disable UNC, you can add it to a separate entry like this:

[nounc]
type = local
nounc = true

And use rclone like this:

rclone copy c:\src nounc:z:\dst

This will use UNC paths on c:\src but not on z:\dst. Of course this will cause problems if the absolute path length of a file exceeds 259 characters on z, so only use this option if you have to.

Symlinks / Junction points

Normally rclone will ignore symlinks or junction points (which behave like symlinks under Windows).

If you supply --copy-links or -L then rclone will follow the symlink and copy the pointed to file or directory. Note that this flag is incompatible with --links / -l.

This flag applies to all commands.

For example, supposing you have a directory structure like this

$ tree /tmp/a
/tmp/a
├── b -> ../b
├── expected -> ../expected
├── one
└── two
    └── three

Then you can see the difference with and without the flag like this

$ rclone ls /tmp/a
        6 one
        6 two/three

and

$ rclone -L ls /tmp/a
     4174 expected
        6 one
        6 two/three
        6 b/two
        6 b/one

--links, -l

Normally rclone will ignore symlinks or junction points (which behave like symlinks under Windows).

If you supply this flag then rclone will copy symbolic links from the local storage, and store them as text files, with a '.rclonelink' suffix in the remote storage.

The text file will contain the target of the symbolic link (see example).

This flag applies to all commands.

For example, supposing you have a directory structure like this

$ tree /tmp/a
/tmp/a
├── file1 -> ./file4
└── file2 -> /home/user/file3

Copying the entire directory with '-l'

$ rclone copyto -l /tmp/a/file1 remote:/tmp/a/

The remote files are created with a '.rclonelink' suffix

$ rclone ls remote:/tmp/a
       5 file1.rclonelink
      14 file2.rclonelink

The remote files will contain the target of the symbolic links

$ rclone cat remote:/tmp/a/file1.rclonelink
./file4

$ rclone cat remote:/tmp/a/file2.rclonelink
/home/user/file3

Copying them back with '-l'

$ rclone copyto -l remote:/tmp/a/ /tmp/b/

$ tree /tmp/b
/tmp/b
├── file1 -> ./file4
└── file2 -> /home/user/file3

However, if copied back without '-l'

$ rclone copyto remote:/tmp/a/ /tmp/b/

$ tree /tmp/b
/tmp/b
├── file1.rclonelink
└── file2.rclonelink

Note that this flag is incompatible with -copy-links / -L.

Restricting filesystems with --one-file-system

Normally rclone will recurse through filesystems as mounted.

However if you set --one-file-system or -x this tells rclone to stay in the filesystem specified by the root and not to recurse into different file systems.

For example if you have a directory hierarchy like this

root
├── disk1     - disk1 mounted on the root
│   └── file3 - stored on disk1
├── disk2     - disk2 mounted on the root
│   └── file4 - stored on disk12
├── file1     - stored on the root disk
└── file2     - stored on the root disk

Using rclone --one-file-system copy root remote: will only copy file1 and file2. Eg

$ rclone -q --one-file-system ls root
        0 file1
        0 file2

$ rclone -q ls root
        0 disk1/file3
        0 disk2/file4
        0 file1
        0 file2

NB Rclone (like most unix tools such as du, rsync and tar) treats a bind mount to the same device as being on the same filesystem.

NB This flag is only available on Unix based systems. On systems where it isn't supported (e.g. Windows) it will be ignored.

{{< rem autogenerated options start" - DO NOT EDIT - instead edit fs.RegInfo in backend/local/local.go then run make backenddocs" >}}

Advanced Options

Here are the advanced options specific to local (Local Disk).

--local-nounc

Disable UNC (long path names) conversion on Windows

  • Config: nounc
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NOUNC
  • Type: string
  • Default: ""
  • Examples:
    • "true"
      • Disables long file names

--copy-links / -L

Follow symlinks and copy the pointed to item.

  • Config: copy_links
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_COPY_LINKS
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--links / -l

Translate symlinks to/from regular files with a '.rclonelink' extension

  • Config: links
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_LINKS
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--skip-links

Don't warn about skipped symlinks. This flag disables warning messages on skipped symlinks or junction points, as you explicitly acknowledge that they should be skipped.

  • Config: skip_links
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_SKIP_LINKS
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-zero-size-links

Assume the Stat size of links is zero (and read them instead) (Deprecated)

Rclone used to use the Stat size of links as the link size, but this fails in quite a few places

  • Windows
  • On some virtual filesystems (such ash LucidLink)
  • Android

So rclone now always reads the link

  • Config: zero_size_links
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_ZERO_SIZE_LINKS
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-unicode-normalization

Apply unicode NFC normalization to paths and filenames

This flag can be used to normalize file names into unicode NFC form that are read from the local filesystem.

Rclone does not normally touch the encoding of file names it reads from the file system.

This can be useful when using macOS as it normally provides decomposed (NFD) unicode which in some language (eg Korean) doesn't display properly on some OSes.

Note that rclone compares filenames with unicode normalization in the sync routine so this flag shouldn't normally be used.

  • Config: unicode_normalization
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_UNICODE_NORMALIZATION
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-no-check-updated

Don't check to see if the files change during upload

Normally rclone checks the size and modification time of files as they are being uploaded and aborts with a message which starts "can't copy

  • source file is being updated" if the file changes during upload.

However on some file systems this modification time check may fail (e.g. Glusterfs #2206) so this check can be disabled with this flag.

If this flag is set, rclone will use its best efforts to transfer a file which is being updated. If the file is only having things appended to it (e.g. a log) then rclone will transfer the log file with the size it had the first time rclone saw it.

If the file is being modified throughout (not just appended to) then the transfer may fail with a hash check failure.

In detail, once the file has had stat() called on it for the first time we:

  • Only transfer the size that stat gave

  • Only checksum the size that stat gave

  • Don't update the stat info for the file

  • Config: no_check_updated

  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NO_CHECK_UPDATED

  • Type: bool

  • Default: false

--one-file-system / -x

Don't cross filesystem boundaries (unix/macOS only).

  • Config: one_file_system
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_ONE_FILE_SYSTEM
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-case-sensitive

Force the filesystem to report itself as case sensitive.

Normally the local backend declares itself as case insensitive on Windows/macOS and case sensitive for everything else. Use this flag to override the default choice.

  • Config: case_sensitive
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_CASE_SENSITIVE
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-case-insensitive

Force the filesystem to report itself as case insensitive

Normally the local backend declares itself as case insensitive on Windows/macOS and case sensitive for everything else. Use this flag to override the default choice.

  • Config: case_insensitive
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_CASE_INSENSITIVE
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-no-preallocate

Disable preallocation of disk space for transferred files

Preallocation of disk space helps prevent filesystem fragmentation. However, some virtual filesystem layers (such as Google Drive File Stream) may incorrectly set the actual file size equal to the preallocated space, causing checksum and file size checks to fail. Use this flag to disable preallocation.

  • Config: no_preallocate
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NO_PREALLOCATE
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-no-sparse

Disable sparse files for multi-thread downloads

On Windows platforms rclone will make sparse files when doing multi-thread downloads. This avoids long pauses on large files where the OS zeros the file. However sparse files may be undesirable as they cause disk fragmentation and can be slow to work with.

  • Config: no_sparse
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NO_SPARSE
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-no-set-modtime

Disable setting modtime

Normally rclone updates modification time of files after they are done uploading. This can cause permissions issues on Linux platforms when the user rclone is running as does not own the file uploaded, such as when copying to a CIFS mount owned by another user. If this option is enabled, rclone will no longer update the modtime after copying a file.

  • Config: no_set_modtime
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NO_SET_MODTIME
  • Type: bool
  • Default: false

--local-encoding

This sets the encoding for the backend.

See: the encoding section in the overview for more info.

  • Config: encoding
  • Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_ENCODING
  • Type: MultiEncoder
  • Default: Slash,Dot

Backend commands

Here are the commands specific to the local backend.

Run them with

rclone backend COMMAND remote:

The help below will explain what arguments each command takes.

See the "rclone backend" command for more info on how to pass options and arguments.

These can be run on a running backend using the rc command backend/command.

noop

A null operation for testing backend commands

rclone backend noop remote: [options] [<arguments>+]

This is a test command which has some options you can try to change the output.

Options:

  • "echo": echo the input arguments
  • "error": return an error based on option value

{{< rem autogenerated options stop >}}