Setting up rclone

rclone is an opensource tool for syncing to various forms of cloud storage.

The 32bit ARM binary works on the reMarkable, and with just a little bit of effort it is relatively easy to sync the device with your Google drive from the ssh shell.

As of December 2020, rclone can now be installed using the Opkg (Entware) package manager. Simply SSH into your device and run:

opkg install rclone

• Download the binaries
  • Download the latest 32bit ARM binaries from https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-current-linux-arm.zip
• Unpack the binaries

  (xenial)kimbotha@localhost:~/Downloads/src$ unzip ../rclone-current-linux-arm.zip 
  Archive:  ../rclone-current-linux-arm.zip
     creating: rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/
    inflating: rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/README.html  
    inflating: rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/rclone  
    inflating: rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/rclone.1  
    inflating: rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/README.txt  

• Copy the rclone binary to the reMarkable

  (xenial)kimbotha@localhost:~/Downloads/src$ cd rclone-v1.38-linux-arm/
  (xenial)kimbotha@localhost:~/Downloads/src/rclone-v1.38-linux-arm$ scp rclone root@10.11.99.1:/usr/bin/
  rclone                                                                          100%   13MB   4.4MB/s   00:03    

• SSH to the reMarkable with a port forward of 53682

  (xenial)kimbotha@localhost:~/Downloads/src/rclone-v1.38-linux-arm$ ssh -L 53682:localhost:53682 root@10.11.99.1
  ｒｅＭａｒｋａｂｌｅ
  ╺━┓┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓   ┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓╻ ╻╻╺┳╸┏━┓┏━┓
  ┏━┛┣╸ ┣┳┛┃ ┃   ┃╺┓┣┳┛┣━┫┃┏┛┃ ┃ ┣━┫┗━┓
  ┗━╸┗━╸╹┗╸┗━┛   ┗━┛╹┗╸╹ ╹┗┛ ╹ ╹ ╹ ╹┗━┛
  remarkable: ~/ 

• Make the rclone binary executable

  remarkable: ~/ chmod +x /usr/bin/rclone 

• Run the rclone config to set up the config for your cloud storage

  remarkable: ~/ rclone config
  2017/11/12 21:37:18 NOTICE: Config file "/home/root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
  No remotes found - make a new one
  n) New remote
  s) Set configuration password
  q) Quit config
  n/s/q> n
  name> cloud
  Type of storage to configure.
  Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
   1 / Amazon Drive
     \ "amazon cloud drive"
   2 / Amazon S3 (also Dreamhost, Ceph, Minio)
     \ "s3"
   3 / Backblaze B2
     \ "b2"
   4 / Box
     \ "box"
   5 / Dropbox
     \ "dropbox"
   6 / Encrypt/Decrypt a remote
     \ "crypt"
   7 / FTP Connection
     \ "ftp"
   8 / Google Cloud Storage (this is not Google Drive)
     \ "google cloud storage"
   9 / Google Drive
     \ "drive"
  10 / Hubic
     \ "hubic"
  11 / Local Disk
     \ "local"
  12 / Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
     \ "azureblob"
  13 / Microsoft OneDrive
     \ "onedrive"
  14 / Openstack Swift (Rackspace Cloud Files, Memset Memstore, OVH)
     \ "swift"
  15 / QingClound Object Storage
     \ "qingstor"
  16 / SSH/SFTP Connection
     \ "sftp"
  17 / Yandex Disk
     \ "yandex"
  18 / http Connection
     \ "http"
  Storage> 9
  Google Application Client Id - leave blank normally.
  client_id> 
  Google Application Client Secret - leave blank normally.
  client_secret> 
  Remote config
  Use auto config?
   * Say Y if not sure
   * Say N if you are working on a remote or headless machine or Y didn't work
  y) Yes
  n) No
  y/n> Y
  If your browser doesn't open automatically go to the following link: http://127.0.0.1:53682/auth
  Log in and authorize rclone for access
  Waiting for code...

• Connect to the URL on your main machine (which should be available because of the port forward
• Authorize the connection
• On your reMarkable the rclone config process should continue

  Got code
  Configure this as a team drive?
  y) Yes
  n) No
  y/n> y
  Fetching team drive list...
  No team drives found in your account--------------------
  [cloud]
  client_id = 
  client_secret = 
  token = {"access_token":"XX.....XX","token_type":"Bearer","refresh_token":"1/XX.....XX","expiry":"2017-11-12T22:40:50.400973087Z"}
  team_drive = 
  --------------------
  y) Yes this is OK
  e) Edit this remote
  d) Delete this remote
  y/e/d> y
  Current remotes:
  
  Name                 Type
  ====                 ====
  cloud                drive
  
  e) Edit existing remote
  n) New remote
  d) Delete remote
  r) Rename remote
  c) Copy remote
  s) Set configuration password
  q) Quit config
  e/n/d/r/c/s/q> q

• You should now be able to use rclone with this config and enable copying, syncing, downloading etc.

  remarkable: ~/ rclone help
  
  Rclone is a command line program to sync files and directories to and
  from various cloud storage systems and using file transfer services, such as:
  ...

• For example, if you want to synchronize the content of folder “test” of your google drive with folder “/home/root/mydrive” of your remarkable, you can use the following command:

  remarkable: ~/ rclone sync cloud:test /home/root/mydrive