rclone
A step-by-step guide for setting up rclone with renterd for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
What is rclone?
Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage. Rclone is very feature-rich and integrates with dozens of cloud storage providers, including any S3-compatible object stores like Sia renterd
.
Users call rclone "The Swiss army knife of cloud storage", and "Technology indistinguishable from magic".
Rclone mounts any local, cloud, or virtual filesystem as a disk on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and FreeBSD and serves these over SFTP, HTTP, WebDAV, FTP, and DLNA. The mount lets us interact with our Sia renterd
storage as a regular filesystem. We can mount renterd
storage to a server’s filesystem or even a local laptop’s filesystem.
This guide requires a working installation of renterd
. If you have not already installed renterd
, you will need to do so before continuing.
For the purpose of this guide, we will start by uploading a file to the Sia Network using the renterd
Web UI. This will be used later to help us verify we have configured things properly.
Step 1: Enable renterd
S3 API
renterd
S3 APIBefore setting up rclone
, we will need to enable renterd
's S3 interface if you have not done so already. Please refer to the renterd
installation guide on configuring your S3 settings if you have not done so already.
If you are running renterd
in a docker container, you will need to override the address via docker: command: -s3.address :8080
Step 2: Install rclone
rclone
Press windows key + R
to open the run dialog. Type in powershell
and press OK
to open a Terminal.
Once the Terminal loads, run the following command to install rclone
.
Step 3: Configuring rclone
rclone
Now that we have rclone
installed, we can use the interactive configuration wizard to set up a new remote. To do so, run the following command from the Terminal.
If the command does not work, you may need to restart your terminal first. To do so, close the current Terminal
and use the same method you used above in Step 2 to open a new one.
When the configuration wizard loads, enter n
to create a new remote.
Next, name your remote. You can name it anything you want, but for this guide, we will be naming it renterd
.
You will now be given a list of Storage
options. Type in s3
and press Enter
.
Next, you will be asked to select a Provider
. Type in other
and press Enter
You will now be asked to select how you would like to supply your S3 credentials. Since we are supplying an access_key_id
and secret_access_key
, we will not be using environment variables. Type in false
or simply press Enter
to use the default.
For the next two questions, you will be prompted for your access_key_id
and secret_access_key
that you set in Step 1.
When prompted for your Region
, press Enter
to leave it blank.
You will now be asked to enter an Endpoint
. This should be the same as the address
parameter we configured in our renterd.yml
for Step 1.
When asked for a Location constraint
press Enter
to leave it empty.
Next, you will be asked to select an ACL
from the list provided. Type in private
and press Enter
.
When asked if you would like to edit the advanced config, type in n
and press Enter
.
You will now be given a summary of your new remote. If they are correct, you can type in y
and press Enter
to save your remote.
You have now successfully created a remote for renterd
. You can now type in q
and press Enter
to quit the configuration wizard.
Step 4: Mount the filesystem
Now that renterd
is running and rclone
is configured with renterd
as a remote, we can mount the renterd
storage to the filesystem.
Before you can use rclone mount
on Windows, you will need to download and install WinFsp.
Once you have installed WinFsp
, you can then mount your renterd
remote and assign it the drive letter X:
using the following command.
On Windows, you can run rclone mount
in the foreground only. The --daemon
flag is ignored if used.
If you have configured everything properly, you should see a confirmation that rclone
has successfully started.
To confirm you have mounted your Sia storage correctly, you should see a new X:
drive on your filesystem.
You can now access your files on Sia directly from your File Explorer.
For more details and system-specific instructions, visit the official rclone mount documentation: https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount
All done.
We successfully used renterd
and rclone to mount our Sia storage as a filesystem. This is a great way to use Sia for your files, especially for use cases such as large video or media libraries that take up many terabytes of space but you would still like available for streaming at any moment. If this guide has been engaging, check out our website to read more about Sia and renterd
, and join our Discord, where the team and community can answer your questions!
Last updated