Help with using Rclone Browser

Hello It’s Foss Comunity.
This is my first post to this forum. I am a long time linux user, though just a user and no expert. I’ve been using Linux Mint for a long time, right now 20 Ulyana Cinnamon on my desktop PC.
As a cluod storage I use Mega, but also the free amount of Google drive. I need synchronization and that’s why I recently installed rclone and rclone browser. It went well, but I can’t find how to use all features of the app, so I am asking for help.
I know that complicated questions are sometimes hard to answer as readers undrstandings may be different than the questioner’s, so I’m starting with two simple:

  1. How to setup a synchronization in rclone browser?
  2. How to create a task in rclone browser?
    Thank you
3 Likes

Thanks for a really quick response.
However, all articles discuss the topis related to command line and scripting only and I am not skilled at that. I very much prefer GUI over command line and the article on Rclone Browser (previou It’sFoss Newsletter) really made me happy.

My questions are about the Browser and to repeat them:

  1. How to setup a synchronization in Rclone Browser?
  2. How to create a task in Rclone Browser?

the first article listed discusses how to work with existing remotes using the rclone browser gui:

If you had any existing remote locations using rclone in the terminal, it will automatically show up in the GUI. You can also hit the “ Refresh ” button to get the latest additions.

As shown in the screenshot above, when you click the “ Config ” button it launches the terminal that lets you easily add a new remote or configure it as you want. Don’t worry when the terminal pops up, Rclone browser executes the commands to do all the necessary tasks, you just have to set up or edit a few things when needed. You don’t need to execute any Rclone commands.

If you have some existing remotes, you can simply open them using the “ Open ” button and have the cloud storage accessible in a different tab as shown below.

(last paragraph bold mine) have you tried any of those options? if so, and they didn’t work maybe sharing what happened when you tried will help.

3 Likes

Thanks for suggestion.
I have existing remotes (Gdrive and One drive) and I can open them in the browser.
I have found out how to make a task, and I am learning on. I see that there is no instructions/tutorials on the topics, so I’ll explore and learn.
Thanks for your support and help.

I see this topic as closed/ solved.

2 Likes

i was also able to get my google drive connected, but couldn’t work out what a task was exactly. i was able to sync a folder and do some basic uploads and downloads.

was there something else you were hoping to accomplish?

perhaps you could share what you have learned to help start a tutorial on the process.

1 Like

I would like to have something like Megasync, firstly an automatic backup to the Gdrive.
I have still to figure out how to do that. I will make me a kind of sandbox ant test and learn. Will try to document and if anything useful comes out, I’ll share.
I could create a task when I started an action, like upload. Left to the button “Run” in the “Upload” popup you have the “Save task” button. Clicking it, another popup opens and you name and save the upload action as a task. Same probably for the othes. I’ll try them all.

i failed to save the link, but one page i read about rclone browser said that it was, in effect, just a browser (that also happens to create the rclone commands for the user). i don’t see in the options a way to make a task run without user initialization. of course you found a way to create a task so it may just be a matter of looking around like you said you were planning on doing.

one thing that i did see was after i ran a sync job i could get the command used to complete that job. in the jobs tab to the right of where it says “Finished Sync from /path/to/directory” there is what looks like a file icon before the x that could be used to close that job listing. when i hovered over that symbol i got a hint that said something like “copy command to clipboard”. i clicked that icon, opened the text editor and used right-click or ctrl + v to paste in the command.

there are terminal commands like cron or at (or even something like systemd timers) that can be used to automate running command like that. i realize you said you don’t want to use the command line. part of my point is that once you have the command, you may just need to look for another program which would be able to schedule it to run if rclone browser turns out to not have that capability.

addendum: managed to find the link:

This tool is meant to be used, as the name suggests, as a file browser, and it’s not intended to replace automated sync solutions. It doesn’t automatically watch folders for changes and automatically synchronizes them. The sync / upload / download is performed on demand.

1 Like

Thanks for the link.
It looks it is not what I need.
I did some more research and it only confirms what is in the article in the link.
I will stay with Overgrive.