nerdfoundry/rclone-bisync repository overview

⁠docker-rclone-bisync

This Docker image and environment is tailored to operating under the bisync user flow⁠ of rclone. That is to say, it's meant to get you up and running for bisync as fast as possible!

⁠Introduction

This project is based on the rclone upstream project, and worthy of fully researching the docs⁠.

⁠Features

If you have an existing config, it's pretty easy to get started out of the box!

Simply supply a RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL env var and mount to the /data volume path, and you're golden! (Don't worry, details are below!)

This project is basically a cronjob that also tracks a "First Run" semaphore as a file existing at /tmp/hasReSyncd. The script merely manages the initial resync/sanity check that's part of rclone bisync user flow, as well as some other defaults, including the check-access feature⁠ (add an RCLONE_TEST file to one of the paths), and verbose enabled by default.

If an error instructs you to, re-run the initial resyncing by either completely remove the container or remove the file inside the container.

Here are all the environment variables to augment the defaults:

• RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL (Required) supplies the config label to target for the container
• RCLONE_EXTRA_FLAGS to add flags to rclone directly (ie: rclone *flagsHere* bisync).
• RCLONE_BISYNC_EXTRA_FLAGS to add flags to rclone bisync (ie: rclone bisync *flagsHere*).
• RCLONE_CRON_SCHEDULE defaults to a 15 minute schedule, but can be override to your liking
• RCLONE_COMMAND can be supplied to override the entire default found in rclone-bisync.sh.

⁠Example (docker-compose)

version: "3"

services:
  rclone-bisync:
    container_name: cloud_sync
    image: nerdfoundry/rclone-bisync
    restart: always
    environment:
      - RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL=<config entry label from .rclone.conf>
      - RCLONE_EXTRA_FLAGS=--drive-skip-gdocs #Add RClone flags to default command easily
      # - RCLONE_BISYNC_EXTRA_FLAGS=--remove-empty-dirs
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/rclone:/config    # needs to stay a directory since this is the user's home directory
      - /path/to/myGoogleDriveData:/data

⁠Example (more complex docker-compose)

x-rclone-bisync: &rclone-bisync
  image: nerdfoundry/rclone-bisync
  restart: unless-stopped
  env_file:
    - .env/.env
    - .env/.env-cloud

services:
  sync_gdrive:
    <<: *rclone-bisync
    container_name: sync_gdrive
    environment:
      - RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL=GDrive_myAccountName
    volumes:
      - ../volumes/rclone:/config # Shared config volume - needs to stay a directory
      - ../../cloud-sync/GDrive_myAccountName:/data

  sync_dropbox:
    <<: *rclone-bisync
    container_name: sync_dropbox
    environment:
      - RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL=Dropbox_myAccountname
    volumes:
      - ../volumes/rclone:/config # Shared config volume - needs to stay a directory
      - ../../cloud-sync/Dropbox_myAccountname:/data

⁠Initial Setup

The intended way to run this image is that every cloud instance has it's own volume, and config (although the config can be shared if desired). That means if you have 3 configs you want to keep in bisync, then you will end up having 3 container definitions.

In this case, I suggest a .env config that defines the RCLONE_EXTRA_FLAGS/RCLONE_BISYNC_EXTRA_FLAGS that are common to all containers, and simply supply RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL per defintion.

⁠Setting up config(s)

First, we'll modify our docker-compose.yml file to do the following:

• Enter a "noop mode" by tailing null
• Supply a "Sync Label Name" via env var
• Port forward for headless configuration (this may vary based on your platform, so you may have to restart the process after you correct this)

services:
  rclone-bisync:
    container_name: cloud_sync_GDrive_accountName # Customize as needed
    -- ...
    entrypoint: tail -f /dev/null
    environment:
      - RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL=GDrive_accountName # Customize as needed
    ports:
      - 53682:53682

In one terminal, bring up the container to noop:

docker-compose up

Now in another terminal, we can exec into the container and create our Config:

docker exec -it cloud_sync_GDrive_accountName rclone config

• You'll be presented with a message indicating a new config is being defaulted, and you can create a New config using the same text as RCLONE_SYNC_LABEL.
• I'll use drive as my platform, choose accordingly!
• Following the Official Documentation⁠, we can set up our own "dev account" for a client id/secret to avoid HTTP 429⁠ errors and actually sync our files.
  • Note that the first few times you sync, you may hit your own limits even still across all your accounts, so give it time and it should work itself out as quotas are reset and sync'ing resumes.
• I want rclone to have full access so I'll use #1, or drive to give full drive access.
• root_folder_id is the name of the top level path you want to sync: I leave it empty to grab everything!
• service_account_file I leave empty because I use the OAuth2 flow
• THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT - Contrary to belief, you want to NOT go into the Advanced Configuration for now
• THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT - Because we're working in Docker, we want to choose the Headless option to provide a link we can put into our browser to authenticate as.
  • This should authenticate as the owner of the Cloud Platform account, not the "dev account" used earlier.
• Once Authenticated, you can simply paste the generated token back into rclone and finish the configuration and save it.

At this point, it should operate as expected on the crontab schedule, but let's kick things off to make sure everything's ok:

docker exec -it cloud_sync_GDrive_accountName ash

# once in the container...

/app/rclone-bisync.sh

# It might take a while, but the first run will force a resync your Cloud -> Local

RCLONE_BISYNC_EXTRA_FLAGS="$RCLONE_BISYNC_EXTRA_FLAGS --dry-run" /app/rclone-bisync.sh

And further executions will no longer resync until forced, or if the container is fully removed and recreated.