Basics of rclone
Cloud storage is cheap nowadays, and you have plenty of storage providers to choose from. So, you have no excuse for not having an off-site backup system to keep your files safe. There is a fly in the ointment, however. Many cloud storage services want you to use their own proprietary graphical client applications. Worse still, some services don't provide Linux clients at all. Fortunately, there is rclone, a small open source utility that can talk to many popular cloud storage services, including Google Drive, Amazon S3, and hubiC. Additionally, rclone can handle local filesystems, so you can use it for local backup, too. The utility is straightforward in use, so there is no learning curve to speak of.
Deploying rclone
Written in Go, rclone is distributed as a self-contained binary file with no dependencies, and it will happily run on the x86, AMD64, and ARM platforms. Installing rclone is not difficult, but it does require a bit of manual work. Grab the latest release of the tool for the appropriate Linux platform from the project's website [1]. Unpack the downloaded archive and switch to the resulting directory in the terminal. Then, copy the binary executable to the /usr/local/bin/
directory and change the file's permissions:
sudo cp rclone /usr/local/bin/ sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/rclone sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/rclone
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.