rclone/docs/content/docs.md

---
title: "Documentation"
description: "Rclone Documentation"
date: "2014-07-17"
---

Install
-------

Rclone is a Go program and comes as a single binary file.

[Download](/downloads/) the relevant binary.

Or alternatively if you have Go installed use

    go get github.com/ncw/rclone

and this will build the binary in `$GOPATH/bin`.

Configure
---------

First you'll need to configure rclone.  As the object storage systems
have quite complicated authentication these are kept in a config file
`.rclone.conf` in your home directory by default.  (You can use the
`--config` option to choose a different config file.)

The easiest way to make the config is to run rclone with the config
option:

    rclone config

See below for detailed instructions for

  * [Google drive](/drive/)
  * [Amazon S3](/s3/)
  * [Swift / Rackspace Cloudfiles / Memset Memstore](/swift/)
  * [Local filesystem](/local/)

Usage
-----

Rclone syncs a directory tree from one storage system to another.

Its syntax is like this

    Syntax: [options] subcommand <parameters> <parameters...>

Source and destination paths are specified by the name you gave the
storage system in the config file then the sub path, eg
"drive:myfolder" to look at "myfolder" in Google drive.

You can define as many storage paths as you like in the config file.

Subcommands
-----------

    rclone copy source:path dest:path

Copy the source to the destination.  Doesn't transfer
unchanged files, testing first by modification time then by
MD5SUM.  Doesn't delete files from the destination.

    rclone sync source:path dest:path

Sync the source to the destination.  Doesn't transfer
unchanged files, testing first by modification time then by
MD5SUM.  Deletes any files that exist in source that don't
exist in destination. Since this can cause data loss, test
first with the -dry-run flag.

    rclone ls [remote:path]

List all the objects in the the path with sizes.

    rclone lsl [remote:path]

List all the objects in the the path with sizes and timestamps.

    rclone lsd [remote:path]

List all directories/objects/buckets in the the path.

    rclone mkdir remote:path

Make the path if it doesn't already exist

    rclone rmdir remote:path

Remove the path.  Note that you can't remove a path with
objects in it, use purge for that.

    rclone purge remote:path

Remove the path and all of its contents.

    rclone check source:path dest:path

Checks the files in the source and destination match.  It
compares sizes and MD5SUMs and prints a report of files which
don't match.  It doesn't alter the source or destination.

    rclone md5sum remote:path

Produces an md5sum file for all the objects in the path.  This is in
the same format as the standard md5sum tool produces.
General options:

```
      --bwlimit=0: Bandwidth limit in kBytes/s, or use suffix k|M|G
      --checkers=8: Number of checkers to run in parallel.
      --transfers=4: Number of file transfers to run in parallel.
      --config="~/.rclone.conf": Config file.
  -n, --dry-run=false: Do a trial run with no permanent changes
      --modify-window=1ns: Max time diff to be considered the same
  -q, --quiet=false: Print as little stuff as possible
      --stats=1m0s: Interval to print stats
  -v, --verbose=false: Print lots more stuff
```

Developer options:

```
      --cpuprofile="": Write cpu profile to file
```

License
-------

This is free software under the terms of MIT the license (check the
COPYING file included in this package).

Bugs
----

  * Empty directories left behind with Local and Drive
    * eg purging a local directory with subdirectories doesn't work

Contact and support
-------------------

The project website is at:

  * https://github.com/ncw/rclone

There you can file bug reports, ask for help or contribute patches.

Authors
-------

  * Nick Craig-Wood <nick@craig-wood.com>

Contributors
------------

  * Your name goes here!