Rclone Mount

How-to

Mounting cloud storage with rclone

rclone mount lets you use a remote storage service (Google Drive, Dropbox, an SFTP server, Amazon S3 and many more) as a normal folder on your service, so Plex, Sonarr, Radarr and your other applications can read from it directly.

This guide assumes you have already added your remote with rclone config, following our Rclone guide. All commands are run in an SSH session.

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What’s new in this version of the SSH app

Mount to any folder inside /downloads
Files are visible in the same place in SSH and in your applications.
Automatic mounts that come back after a restart, reboot or reinstall.
No more screen or --allow-non-empty.

If your SSH app was installed before this update, back up your rclone config (see section 5) and reinstall SSH from the client area to get these changes.

1. Where everything lives

`/downloads`	Your files. Shared with all your applications, so mount here.
`~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf`	Your rclone configuration. Edit with `nano ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf`, or run `rclone config`.
`/downloads/Apps/rclone/mounts.conf`	Your list of automatic mounts (section 3).
`/.cache/rclone`	rclone’s cache and the mount log files.

2. Mount a remote

The examples use a remote called Gdrive. Replace it with the name you gave your remote in rclone config. You can also mount a sub-folder, e.g. Gdrive:/Media instead of Gdrive:/.

Create a folder to mount on

Any empty folder inside /downloads works. Use one folder per remote.

mkdir -p /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive

Mount it

--daemon runs the mount in the background, so it keeps running after you close SSH.

rclone mount --allow-other --use-mmap --dir-cache-time 5m --timeout 1h \
  --umask 002 --vfs-cache-mode writes --vfs-read-chunk-size 64M \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit 2048M --tpslimit 10 \
  --daemon --log-file /.cache/rclone/gdrive.log \
  Gdrive:/ /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive

Check it worked

The first command should show fuse.rclone, the second your files.

findmnt /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive
ls /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive

If nothing is shown, the mount failed. The reason is in the log: cat /.cache/rclone/gdrive.log

Mount inside /downloads. If an application was already running, restart it after mounting so it picks up the new files.

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New files not showing up? --dir-cache-time controls how long folder listings are remembered. Remotes that report changes themselves (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) can use a longer cache plus --poll-interval 1m. Remotes that don’t (SFTP, FTP, WebDAV) should keep a short cache like 5m.

3. Mount automatically Recommended

Remotes listed in mounts.conf are mounted every time the SSH app starts: after a restart, a server reboot or a reinstall. This file is kept when you reinstall SSH.

Open the mounts file

It already contains an example to start from.

nano /downloads/Apps/rclone/mounts.conf

Add one line per remote

Format: remote:path, the folder to mount on, then any extra rclone flags.

# Basic
Gdrive:/   /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive

# Or with extra flags (remove the # and the line above to use it)
# Gdrive:/   /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive   --dir-cache-time 1m

Lines starting with # are ignored.
Folder paths can’t contain spaces. The folder is created for you.
The standard flags from section 2 are added automatically. Flags you add on the line override them.

Save with Ctrl+O, then Enter, and exit with Ctrl+X.

Start the mount now

The file is read on the next start of the SSH app. To mount straight away without restarting, run the command from section 2 once.

Each automatic mount logs to /.cache/rclone/mount-1.log, mount-2.log and so on, numbered in the order of the lines in the file.

4. Unmount a remote

fusermount3 -uz /downloads/rclone-mnt/gdrive

To stop it mounting automatically, remove or comment out its line in mounts.conf.

5. Reinstalling SSH

Reinstalling gives you a fresh SSH app. This is what happens to your setup:

Files in `/downloads`	Kept, including `mounts.conf`
Automatic mounts	Come back once the new install starts
rclone config	Removed: back it up first (below)
SSH port	Changes: check your service page

Back up your rclone config

Run on your own computer before reinstalling.

scp -P PORT [email protected]:.config/rclone/rclone.conf rclone.conf

Restore it after reinstalling

Use the new port from your service page.

scp -P NEWPORT rclone.conf [email protected]:.config/rclone/rclone.conf

Your automatic mounts need the config, so restore it, then mount with section 2 (or restart the SSH app).

Your rclone config contains the passwords and tokens for your remotes. Keep the backup somewhere safe and don’t share it.

6. Troubleshooting

“directory already mounted”Something is already mounted on that folder, usually the same remote from earlier. Check with findmnt /path, unmount it with section 4, then mount again.

“Transport endpoint is not connected”The mount stopped (for example after a crash). Run fusermount3 -uz /path, then mount again. Restarting the SSH app also clears these automatically.

“fusermount3: mount failed: Permission denied”Mount on a folder inside /downloads that you created yourself. If it still fails there, contact support.

Mount command returns but the folder is emptyWith --daemon, errors only go to the log. Check the file given in --log-file, or for automatic mounts /.cache/rclone/mount-N.log.

Plex / Sonarr / Radarr can’t see the filesMake sure the mount is inside /downloads, then restart the application.

New files on the remote take a long time to appearLower --dir-cache-time, or add --poll-interval 1m if your remote supports it (see the tip in section 2).

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Moving files rather than streaming them? rclone copy and rclone sync are faster and more reliable for bulk transfers than copying through a mount. See our Rclone guide.