rclone/docs/content/local.md

title	description	date
Local Filesystem	Rclone docs for the local filesystem	2014-04-26

Local Filesystem

Local paths are specified as normal filesystem paths, eg /path/to/wherever, so

rclone sync /home/source /tmp/destination

Will sync /home/source to /tmp/destination

These can be configured into the config file for consistencies sake, 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 (eg 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), eg

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

Restricted characters

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 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.

Long paths on Windows

Rclone handles long paths automatically, by converting all paths to long UNC paths which allows paths up to 32,767 characters.

This is why you will see that your paths, for instance c:\files is converted to the UNC path \\?\c:\files in the output, and \\server\share is converted to \\?\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 258 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 (eg Windows) it will be ignored.

Standard Options

Here are the standard 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

Advanced Options

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

--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-no-unicode-normalization

Don't apply unicode normalization to paths and filenames (Deprecated)

This flag is deprecated now. Rclone no longer normalizes unicode file names, but it compares them with unicode normalization in the sync routine instead.

• Config: no_unicode_normalization
• Env Var: RCLONE_LOCAL_NO_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 (eg Glusterfs #2206) so this check can be disabled with this flag.

• 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-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