438 lines
22 KiB
Markdown
438 lines
22 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Overview of cloud storage systems"
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description: "Overview of cloud storage systems"
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type: page
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---
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# Overview of cloud storage systems #
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Each cloud storage system is slightly different. Rclone attempts to
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provide a unified interface to them, but some underlying differences
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show through.
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## Features ##
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Here is an overview of the major features of each cloud storage system.
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| Name | Hash | ModTime | Case Insensitive | Duplicate Files | MIME Type |
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| ---------------------------- |:-----------:|:-------:|:----------------:|:---------------:|:---------:|
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| 1Fichier | Whirlpool | No | No | Yes | R |
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| Amazon Drive | MD5 | No | Yes | No | R |
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| Amazon S3 | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| Backblaze B2 | SHA1 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| Box | SHA1 | Yes | Yes | No | - |
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| Citrix ShareFile | MD5 | Yes | Yes | No | - |
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| Dropbox | DBHASH † | Yes | Yes | No | - |
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| FTP | - | No | No | No | - |
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| Google Cloud Storage | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| Google Drive | MD5 | Yes | No | Yes | R/W |
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| Google Photos | - | No | No | Yes | R |
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| HTTP | - | No | No | No | R |
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| Hubic | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| Jottacloud | MD5 | Yes | Yes | No | R/W |
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| Koofr | MD5 | No | Yes | No | - |
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| Mail.ru Cloud | Mailru ‡‡‡ | Yes | Yes | No | - |
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| Mega | - | No | No | Yes | - |
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| Memory | MD5 | Yes | No | No | - |
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| Microsoft Azure Blob Storage | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| Microsoft OneDrive | SHA1 ‡‡ | Yes | Yes | No | R |
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| OpenDrive | MD5 | Yes | Yes | Partial \* | - |
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| OpenStack Swift | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| pCloud | MD5, SHA1 | Yes | No | No | W |
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| premiumize.me | - | No | Yes | No | R |
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| put.io | CRC-32 | Yes | No | Yes | R |
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| QingStor | MD5 | No | No | No | R/W |
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| Seafile | - | No | No | No | - |
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| SFTP | MD5, SHA1 ‡ | Yes | Depends | No | - |
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| SugarSync | - | No | No | No | - |
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| Tardigrade | - | Yes | No | No | - |
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| WebDAV | MD5, SHA1 ††| Yes ††† | Depends | No | - |
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| Yandex Disk | MD5 | Yes | No | No | R/W |
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| The local filesystem | All | Yes | Depends | No | - |
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### Hash ###
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The cloud storage system supports various hash types of the objects.
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The hashes are used when transferring data as an integrity check and
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can be specifically used with the `--checksum` flag in syncs and in
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the `check` command.
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To use the verify checksums when transferring between cloud storage
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systems they must support a common hash type.
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† Note that Dropbox supports [its own custom
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hash](https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/content-hash).
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This is an SHA256 sum of all the 4MB block SHA256s.
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‡ SFTP supports checksums if the same login has shell access and `md5sum`
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or `sha1sum` as well as `echo` are in the remote's PATH.
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†† WebDAV supports hashes when used with Owncloud and Nextcloud only.
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††† WebDAV supports modtimes when used with Owncloud and Nextcloud only.
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‡‡ Microsoft OneDrive Personal supports SHA1 hashes, whereas OneDrive
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for business and SharePoint server support Microsoft's own
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[QuickXorHash](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/developer/code-snippets/quickxorhash).
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‡‡‡ Mail.ru uses its own modified SHA1 hash
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### ModTime ###
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The cloud storage system supports setting modification times on
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objects. If it does then this enables a using the modification times
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as part of the sync. If not then only the size will be checked by
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default, though the MD5SUM can be checked with the `--checksum` flag.
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All cloud storage systems support some kind of date on the object and
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these will be set when transferring from the cloud storage system.
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### Case Insensitive ###
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If a cloud storage systems is case sensitive then it is possible to
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have two files which differ only in case, e.g. `file.txt` and
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`FILE.txt`. If a cloud storage system is case insensitive then that
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isn't possible.
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This can cause problems when syncing between a case insensitive
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system and a case sensitive system. The symptom of this is that no
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matter how many times you run the sync it never completes fully.
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The local filesystem and SFTP may or may not be case sensitive
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depending on OS.
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* Windows - usually case insensitive, though case is preserved
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* OSX - usually case insensitive, though it is possible to format case sensitive
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* Linux - usually case sensitive, but there are case insensitive file systems (e.g. FAT formatted USB keys)
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Most of the time this doesn't cause any problems as people tend to
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avoid files whose name differs only by case even on case sensitive
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systems.
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### Duplicate files ###
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If a cloud storage system allows duplicate files then it can have two
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objects with the same name.
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This confuses rclone greatly when syncing - use the `rclone dedupe`
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command to rename or remove duplicates.
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\* Opendrive does not support creation of duplicate files using
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their web client interface or other stock clients, but the underlying
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storage platform has been determined to allow duplicate files, and it
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is possible to create them with `rclone`. It may be that this is a
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mistake or an unsupported feature.
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### Restricted filenames ###
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Some cloud storage systems might have restrictions on the characters
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that are usable in file or directory names.
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When `rclone` detects such a name during a file upload, it will
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transparently replace the restricted characters with similar looking
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Unicode characters.
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This process is designed to avoid ambiguous file names as much as
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possible and allow to move files between many cloud storage systems
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transparently.
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The name shown by `rclone` to the user or during log output will only
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contain a minimal set of [replaced characters](#restricted-characters)
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to ensure correct formatting and not necessarily the actual name used
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on the cloud storage.
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This transformation is reversed when downloading a file or parsing
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`rclone` arguments.
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For example, when uploading a file named `my file?.txt` to Onedrive
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will be displayed as `my file?.txt` on the console, but stored as
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`my file？.txt` (the `?` gets replaced by the similar looking `？`
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character) to Onedrive.
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The reverse transformation allows to read a file`unusual/name.txt`
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from Google Drive, by passing the name `unusual／name.txt` (the `/` needs
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to be replaced by the similar looking `／` character) on the command line.
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#### Default restricted characters {#restricted-characters}
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The table below shows the characters that are replaced by default.
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When a replacement character is found in a filename, this character
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will be escaped with the `‛` character to avoid ambiguous file names.
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(e.g. a file named `␀.txt` would shown as `‛␀.txt`)
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Each cloud storage backend can use a different set of characters,
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which will be specified in the documentation for each backend.
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| Character | Value | Replacement |
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| --------- |:-----:|:-----------:|
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| NUL | 0x00 | ␀ |
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| SOH | 0x01 | ␁ |
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| STX | 0x02 | ␂ |
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| ETX | 0x03 | ␃ |
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| EOT | 0x04 | ␄ |
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| ENQ | 0x05 | ␅ |
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| ACK | 0x06 | ␆ |
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| BEL | 0x07 | ␇ |
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| BS | 0x08 | ␈ |
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| HT | 0x09 | ␉ |
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| LF | 0x0A | ␊ |
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| VT | 0x0B | ␋ |
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| FF | 0x0C | ␌ |
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| CR | 0x0D | ␍ |
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| SO | 0x0E | ␎ |
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| SI | 0x0F | ␏ |
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| DLE | 0x10 | ␐ |
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| DC1 | 0x11 | ␑ |
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| DC2 | 0x12 | ␒ |
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| DC3 | 0x13 | ␓ |
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| DC4 | 0x14 | ␔ |
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| NAK | 0x15 | ␕ |
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| SYN | 0x16 | ␖ |
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| ETB | 0x17 | ␗ |
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| CAN | 0x18 | ␘ |
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| EM | 0x19 | ␙ |
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| SUB | 0x1A | ␚ |
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| ESC | 0x1B | ␛ |
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| FS | 0x1C | ␜ |
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| GS | 0x1D | ␝ |
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| RS | 0x1E | ␞ |
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| US | 0x1F | ␟ |
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| / | 0x2F | ／ |
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| DEL | 0x7F | ␡ |
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The default encoding will also encode these file names as they are
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problematic with many cloud storage systems.
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| File name | Replacement |
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| --------- |:-----------:|
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| . | ． |
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| .. | ．． |
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#### Invalid UTF-8 bytes {#invalid-utf8}
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Some backends only support a sequence of well formed UTF-8 bytes
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as file or directory names.
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In this case all invalid UTF-8 bytes will be replaced with a quoted
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representation of the byte value to allow uploading a file to such a
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backend. For example, the invalid byte `0xFE` will be encoded as `‛FE`.
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A common source of invalid UTF-8 bytes are local filesystems, that store
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names in a different encoding than UTF-8 or UTF-16, like latin1. See the
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[local filenames](/local/#filenames) section for details.
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#### Encoding option {#encoding}
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Most backends have an encoding options, specified as a flag
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`--backend-encoding` where `backend` is the name of the backend, or as
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a config parameter `encoding` (you'll need to select the Advanced
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config in `rclone config` to see it).
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This will have default value which encodes and decodes characters in
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such a way as to preserve the maximum number of characters (see
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above).
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However this can be incorrect in some scenarios, for example if you
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have a Windows file system with characters such as `＊` and `？` that
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you want to remain as those characters on the remote rather than being
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translated to `*` and `?`.
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The `--backend-encoding` flags allow you to change that. You can
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disable the encoding completely with `--backend-encoding None` or set
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`encoding = None` in the config file.
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Encoding takes a comma separated list of encodings. You can see the
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list of all available characters by passing an invalid value to this
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flag, e.g. `--local-encoding "help"` and `rclone help flags encoding`
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will show you the defaults for the backends.
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| Encoding | Characters |
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| --------- | ---------- |
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| Asterisk | `*` |
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| BackQuote | `` ` `` |
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| BackSlash | `\` |
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| Colon | `:` |
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| CrLf | CR 0x0D, LF 0x0A |
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| Ctl | All control characters 0x00-0x1F |
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| Del | DEL 0x7F |
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| Dollar | `$` |
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| Dot | `.` |
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| DoubleQuote | `"` |
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| Hash | `#` |
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| InvalidUtf8 | An invalid UTF-8 character (e.g. latin1) |
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| LeftCrLfHtVt | CR 0x0D, LF 0x0A,HT 0x09, VT 0x0B on the left of a string |
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| LeftPeriod | `.` on the left of a string |
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| LeftSpace | SPACE on the left of a string |
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| LeftTilde | `~` on the left of a string |
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| LtGt | `<`, `>` |
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| None | No characters are encoded |
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| Percent | `%` |
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| Pipe | \| |
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| Question | `?` |
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| RightCrLfHtVt | CR 0x0D, LF 0x0A, HT 0x09, VT 0x0B on the right of a string |
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| RightPeriod | `.` on the right of a string |
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| RightSpace | SPACE on the right of a string |
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| SingleQuote | `'` |
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| Slash | `/` |
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To take a specific example, the FTP backend's default encoding is
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--ftp-encoding "Slash,Del,Ctl,RightSpace,Dot"
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However, let's say the FTP server is running on Windows and can't have
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any of the invalid Windows characters in file names. You are backing
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up Linux servers to this FTP server which do have those characters in
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file names. So you would add the Windows set which are
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Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Question,Asterisk,Pipe,BackSlash,Ctl,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot
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to the existing ones, giving:
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Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Question,Asterisk,Pipe,BackSlash,Ctl,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot,Del,RightSpace
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This can be specified using the `--ftp-encoding` flag or using an `encoding` parameter in the config file.
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Or let's say you have a Windows server but you want to preserve `＊`
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and `？`, you would then have this as the encoding (the Windows
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encoding minus `Asterisk` and `Question`).
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Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Pipe,BackSlash,Ctl,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot
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This can be specified using the `--local-encoding` flag or using an
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`encoding` parameter in the config file.
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### MIME Type ###
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MIME types (also known as media types) classify types of documents
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using a simple text classification, e.g. `text/html` or
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`application/pdf`.
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Some cloud storage systems support reading (`R`) the MIME type of
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objects and some support writing (`W`) the MIME type of objects.
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The MIME type can be important if you are serving files directly to
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HTTP from the storage system.
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If you are copying from a remote which supports reading (`R`) to a
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remote which supports writing (`W`) then rclone will preserve the MIME
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types. Otherwise they will be guessed from the extension, or the
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remote itself may assign the MIME type.
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## Optional Features ##
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All the remotes support a basic set of features, but there are some
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optional features supported by some remotes used to make some
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operations more efficient.
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| Name | Purge | Copy | Move | DirMove | CleanUp | ListR | StreamUpload | LinkSharing | About | EmptyDir |
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| ---------------------------- |:-----:|:----:|:----:|:-------:|:-------:|:-----:|:------------:|:------------:|:-----:| :------: |
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| 1Fichier | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
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| Amazon Drive | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No [#575](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/575) | No | No | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | Yes |
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| Amazon S3 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | No |
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| Backblaze B2 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
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| Box | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes ‡‡ | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
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| Citrix ShareFile | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
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| Dropbox | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No [#575](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/575) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| FTP | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | Yes |
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| Google Cloud Storage | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | No |
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| Google Drive | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| Google Photos | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
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| HTTP | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | Yes |
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| Hubic | Yes † | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | No |
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| Jottacloud | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| Mail.ru Cloud | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| Mega | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | Yes |
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| Memory | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
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| Microsoft Azure Blob Storage | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | No |
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| Microsoft OneDrive | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| OpenDrive | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
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| OpenStack Swift | Yes † | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | No |
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| pCloud | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| premiumize.me | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| put.io | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | Yes |
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| QingStor | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | No | No |
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| Seafile | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| SFTP | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | Yes |
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| SugarSync | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
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| Tardigrade | Yes † | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
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| WebDAV | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes ‡ | No [#2178](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/2178) | Yes | Yes |
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| Yandex Disk | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| The local filesystem | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
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### Purge ###
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This deletes a directory quicker than just deleting all the files in
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the directory.
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† Note Swift, Hubic, and Tardigrade implement this in order to delete
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directory markers but they don't actually have a quicker way of deleting
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files other than deleting them individually.
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‡ StreamUpload is not supported with Nextcloud
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### Copy ###
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Used when copying an object to and from the same remote. This known
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as a server-side copy so you can copy a file without downloading it
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and uploading it again. It is used if you use `rclone copy` or
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`rclone move` if the remote doesn't support `Move` directly.
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If the server doesn't support `Copy` directly then for copy operations
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the file is downloaded then re-uploaded.
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### Move ###
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Used when moving/renaming an object on the same remote. This is known
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as a server-side move of a file. This is used in `rclone move` if the
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server doesn't support `DirMove`.
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If the server isn't capable of `Move` then rclone simulates it with
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`Copy` then delete. If the server doesn't support `Copy` then rclone
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will download the file and re-upload it.
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### DirMove ###
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This is used to implement `rclone move` to move a directory if
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possible. If it isn't then it will use `Move` on each file (which
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falls back to `Copy` then download and upload - see `Move` section).
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### CleanUp ###
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This is used for emptying the trash for a remote by `rclone cleanup`.
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If the server can't do `CleanUp` then `rclone cleanup` will return an
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error.
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‡‡ Note that while Box implements this it has to delete every file
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individually so it will be slower than emptying the trash via the WebUI
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### ListR ###
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The remote supports a recursive list to list all the contents beneath
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a directory quickly. This enables the `--fast-list` flag to work.
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See the [rclone docs](/docs/#fast-list) for more details.
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### StreamUpload ###
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Some remotes allow files to be uploaded without knowing the file size
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in advance. This allows certain operations to work without spooling the
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|
file to local disk first, e.g. `rclone rcat`.
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### LinkSharing ###
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|
Sets the necessary permissions on a file or folder and prints a link
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|
that allows others to access them, even if they don't have an account
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|
on the particular cloud provider.
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### About ###
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This is used to fetch quota information from the remote, like bytes
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|
used/free/quota and bytes used in the trash.
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This is also used to return the space used, available for `rclone mount`.
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If the server can't do `About` then `rclone about` will return an
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|
error.
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### EmptyDir ###
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The remote supports empty directories. See [Limitations](/bugs/#limitations)
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|
for details. Most Object/Bucket based remotes do not support this.
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