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Installing and setting up Rclone

Reviewed on 24 March 2025 • Published on 25 August 2021

Rclone is a command-line tool that can be used to manage your cloud storage. It communicates with any Amazon S3-compatible cloud storage provider as well as other storage platforms.

Follow the instructions given in the official Rclone documentation here to install Rclone.

For example, on Linux:

Connect to your server as root via SSH.

Then, download and install Rclone with the following sequence of commands:

wget https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
apt install zip
unzip rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
cd rclone*linux-amd64/
mv rclone /usr/bin/

Before you startLink to this anchor

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization

Configuring RcloneLink to this anchor

Run the following command to begin the Rclone configuration:

rclone config

If you do not have any existing remotes, the following output displays:

2021/01/18 16:03:28 NOTICE: Config file "/root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
No remotes found - make a new one
n) New remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config

If you have previously configured Rclone you may see a slightly different output. However, that does not affect the following steps.

Type n to make a new remote. You are then prompted to type a name - here we type remote-sw-paris:

n/s/q> n
name> remote-sw-paris

The following output displays:

Type of storage to configure.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
1 / 1Fichier
  \ (fichier)
2 / Akamai NetStorage
  \ (netstorage)
3 / Alias for an existing remote
  \ (alias)
4 / Amazon S3 Compliant Storage Providers including AWS, Alibaba, ArvanCloud, Ceph, ChinaMobile, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Dreamhost, GCS, HuaweiOBS, IBMCOS, IDrive, IONOS, LyveCloud, Leviia, Liara, Linode, Magalu, Minio, Netease, Petabox, RackCorp, Rclone, Scaleway, SeaweedFS, StackPath, Storj, Synology, TencentCOS, Wasabi, Qiniu and others
\ (s3)
[...]
Storage>

Type s3 and hit enter to confirm this storage type. The following output displays:

Choose your Amazon S3 provider.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value.
Press Enter to leave empty.
1 / Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3
  \ (AWS)
2 / Alibaba Cloud Object Storage System (OSS) formerly Aliyun
  \ (Alibaba)
3 / Arvan Cloud Object Storage (AOS)
  \ (ArvanCloud)
4 / Ceph Object Storage
  \ (Ceph)
[...]
24 / Scaleway Object Storage
  \ (Scaleway)
[...]

Type Scaleway and hit enter to confirm this Amazon S3 provider. The following output displays:

Get AWS credentials from runtime (environment variables or EC2/ECS meta data if no env vars).
Only applies if access_key_id and secret_access_key is blank.
Enter a boolean value (true or false). Press Enter for the default ("false").
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
1 / Enter AWS credentials in the next step
  \ "false"
2 / Get AWS credentials from the environment (env vars or IAM)
  \ "true"
env_auth>

Type false and hit enter, to be able to enter your credentials in the next step. The following output displays:

AWS Access Key ID.
Leave blank for anonymous access or runtime credentials.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
access_key_id>

Enter your API access key and hit enter. The following output displays:
```
AWS Secret Access Key (password)
Leave blank for anonymous access or runtime credentials.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
secret_access_key>
```

Enter your API secret key and hit enter. The following output displays:

Region to connect to.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value.
Press Enter to leave empty.
1 / Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  \ (nl-ams)
2 / Paris, France
  \ (fr-par)
3 / Warsaw, Poland
  \ (pl-waw)

Enter your chosen region and hit enter. Here we choose fr-par. The following output displays:

Endpoint for Scaleway Object Storage.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value.
Press Enter to leave empty.
1 / Amsterdam Endpoint
  \ (s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud)
2 / Paris Endpoint
  \ (s3.fr-par.scw.cloud)
3 / Warsaw Endpoint
  \ (s3.pl-waw.scw.cloud)

Enter your chosen endpoint and hit enter. Here we choose s3.fr-par.scw.cloud. The following output displays:

Option acl.
Canned ACL used when creating buckets and storing or copying objects.
This ACL is used for creating objects and if bucket_acl isn't set, for creating buckets too.
For more info visit https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/acl-overview.html#canned-acl
Note that this ACL is applied when server-side copying objects as S3
doesn't copy the ACL from the source but rather writes a fresh one.
If the acl is an empty string then no X-Amz-Acl: header is added and
the default (private) will be used.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value.
Press Enter to leave empty.
  / Owner gets FULL_CONTROL.
1 | No one else has access rights (default).
  \ (private)
  / Owner gets FULL_CONTROL.
2 | The AllUsers group gets READ access.
  \ (public-read)
  / Owner gets FULL_CONTROL.
3 | The AllUsers group gets READ and WRITE access.
  | Granting this on a bucket is generally not recommended.
  \ (public-read-write)
  / Owner gets FULL_CONTROL.
4 | The AuthenticatedUsers group gets READ access.
  \ (authenticated-read)
  / Object owner gets FULL_CONTROL.
5 | Bucket owner gets READ access.
  | If you specify this canned ACL when creating a bucket, Amazon S3 ignores it.
  \ (bucket-owner-read)
  / Both the object owner and the bucket owner get FULL_CONTROL over the object.
6 | If you specify this canned ACL when creating a bucket, Amazon S3 ignores it.
  \ (bucket-owner-full-control)
acl>

Enter your chosen ACL and hit enter. Here we choose private (1). The following output displays:

Option storage_class.
The storage class to use when storing new objects in S3.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value.
Press Enter to leave empty.
1 / Default.
  \ ()
  / The Standard class for any upload.
2 | Suitable for on-demand content like streaming or CDN.
  | Available in all regions.
  \ (STANDARD)
  / Archived storage.
3 | Prices are lower, but it needs to be restored first to be accessed.
  | Available in FR-PAR and NL-AMS regions.
  \ (GLACIER)
  / One Zone - Infrequent Access.
4 | A good choice for storing secondary backup copies or easily re-creatable data.
  | Available in the FR-PAR region only.
  \ (ONEZONE_IA)

Enter your chosen storage class and hit enter. Here we choose STANDARD (2). The following output displays:

Edit advanced config? (y/n)
y) Yes
n) No (default)
y/n>

Type n and hit enter. A summary of your config displays:

Configuration complete.
Options:
- type: s3
- provider: Scaleway
- access_key_id: <ACCESS-KEY>
- secret_access_key: <SECRET-KEY>
- region: fr-par
- endpoint: s3.fr-par.scw.cloud
- acl: private
- storage_class: STANDARD
Keep this "remote-scw-paris" remote?
y) Yes this is OK (default)
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d>

Type y to confirm that this remote config is OK, and hit enter.

The following output displays:

Current remotes:
Name                 Type
====                 ====
remote-scw-paris     s3
e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
r) Rename remote
c) Copy remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
e/n/d/r/c/s/q> q

Type q to quit the config, and hit enter.

Note
If you want to be able to transfer data to or from a bucket in a different region to the one you just set up, repeat steps 1-14 again to set up a new remote in the required region. Simply enter the required region at steps 7 and 8. Similarly, you may wish to set up a new remote for a different Object Storage provider.

For further information, refer to the official RClone Object Storage Documentation. Official documentation also exists for other storage backends.

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