Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage, with cloud equivalents to unix commands like rsync
, cp
, mv
, mount
, ls
, and more. This guide describes how to configure rclone for Vultr Object Storage.
testbucket
.The rclone commands are cross-platform. This guide shows examples for macOS in zsh, which are compatible with Linux in bash. Windows users will make minor command adjustments for PowerShell or CMD.
Locate your rclone configuration file location. This example path below comes from a macOS installation.
$ rclone config file
Configuration file doesn't exist, but rclone will use this path:
/Users/example/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
Create a configuration file.
$ nano /Users/example/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
Paste the following to the file. Replace access_key_id
and secret_access_key
with your values.
[vultr-ewr1]
type = s3
provider = Vultr
env_auth = false
access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
region =
endpoint = https://ewr1.vultrobjects.com
location_constraint =
acl = private
server_side_encryption =
storage_class =
The acl =
line sets the default file permission.
In general, use private unless you share files via URL. Read more about s3 permissions in the rclone documentation.
Create a test folder and change to it.
$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
Assuming the tmp
folder is empty, create three test files.
$ echo "hello rclone" > test1.txt
$ echo "hello rclone" > test2.txt
$ echo "hello rclone" > test3.txt
Copy one file to the bucket.
$ rclone copy test1.txt vultr:testbucket
List the bucket. Notice that test1.txt exists in the bucket and is 13 bytes.
$ rclone ls vultr:testbucket
13 test1.txt
Delete test1.txt
from the local system.
$ rm test1.txt
List the bucket. Notice that test1.txt still exists.
$ rclone ls vultr:testbucket
13 test1.txt
Sync the entire folder to the bucket.
$ rclone sync . vultr:testbucket
List the bucket. Notice that rclone synced the bucket with the local system by removing test1.txt
and adding the other two files.
$ rclone ls vultr:testbucket
13 test2.txt
13 test3.txt
In addition to cloning local files to object Storage, rclone can work with two object storage buckets, or locations. If you have multiple instances with different keys, declare them in rclone.conf
with different labels. They can also have different permissions.
Here's an example of two different object storage instances, having different keys and different permissions. The vultr-private
configuration does not allow public access, while the vultr-public
configuration uses a different set of keys in a different object storage instance, and allows public web access. The keys and acl=
lines are different between the configurations.
[vultr-private]
type = s3
provider = Vultr
env_auth = false
access_key_id = PRIVATE_KEY
secret_access_key = SECRET_PRIVATE_KEY
region =
endpoint = https://ewr1.vultrobjects.com
location_constraint =
acl = private
server_side_encryption =
storage_class =
[vultr-public]
type = s3
provider = Vultr
env_auth = false
access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
region =
endpoint = https://ewr1.vultrobjects.com
location_constraint =
acl = public-read
server_side_encryption =
storage_class =
To sync the private instance to the public instance, you'd use rclone like this:
$ rclone sync vultr-private:my_bucket vultr-public:my_public_bucket
If you encounter HTTP error codes 429, 503, or 504, you may have hit the Vultr Object Storage rate limit. If you encounter this issue, we recommend the following command line options.
--tpslimit 100
--transfers 1
Please refer to the rclone documentation for more information.