Author: Eiko

Tags: rclone, remote, remote edit, virtual file system, neovim, edit, low latency

Remote Edit

Remote edit is important, the ways I frequently use are

use nvim inside ssh, requires the remote machine to have nvim installed, and you will have to deal with latency.
use sshfs to mount remote directory to local. You can use your local editor which is great, but you still have to deal with latency.
use scp or rsync to copy the files back and forth, giving you the lowest latency. But it’s not very convenient.

Below I will describe the new convenient and low latency magic I have found! owo

Overview

In short it works as follows:

Mount the remote directory to local using rclone
```
rclone mount remote:remote_path local_path --vfs-cache-mode writes
```
- Replace remote, remotepath, and localpath with your own values. The path needs to be directory, and you can use mkdir local_path to create the local path for mounting.
- An optional --daemon flag can be added to run it in the background. According to their manual, this deamon flag is not effective in Windows.
- The --vfs-cache-mode writes flag is optional but recommendable, it will cache the files that you open to write locally, making the editing experience smoother.
Edit the files!
```
nvim local_path/file
```

Unmount the remote directory

If it becomes unresponsive, or you need to stop it, you can Ctrl+C to stop it or kill it, and unmount it by running

killall rclone            # kills all rclone processes

fusermount -u local_path  # unmounts the local path
# or
umount local_path         # unmounts the local path, alternative way

That’s it! very simple and you can enjoy the low latency editing experience just like it is local! The only latency happens when you try to save your file.

Installation

It should be easy to install rclone as most distros already package it. Their downloading website is Download Rclone.

sudo apt install rclone # for debian based distros
sudo pacman -S rclone # for arch based distros

And it is even available on Windows OwO! (Head to the official link, I haven’t tested it on Windows since I don’t use Windows)

Configuration

One of the distinct feature of rclone is, it must be configured before you can use it. You cannot run it like ssh user@host or rsync -avz user@host:/path/to/file /local/path, these will not work. You must configure each remote you will use (and have rclone installed on the remote as well), the configuration are as follows, choose the way that suits you the best.

Interactive Configuration

Simply run the command, and you will answer like 20 questions

rclone config

File based Configuration

This is the approach I prefered. Head to the path ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf (create the path and file if it does not exist) and add the following (which is the configuration I use)

[YourRemoteName]
type = sftp
key_file = /home/eiko/.ssh/YourKeyFile
shell_type = unix
md5sum_command = md5sum
sha1sum_command = sha1sum
host = YourRemoteAddress
user = YourRemoteUsername

Replace the YourRemoteName, YourKeyFile, YourRemoteAddress, and YourRemoteUsername with your own values owo! The type can be sftp, ftp, webdav, etc. Sftp transmits data in an encrypted way so I usually use it. You can find the full list of supported remotes in their manual owo, or during the interactive configuration.

Other Usages of Rclone

Rclone is a very powerful and versatile tool, I use it to backup and sync my files and cellphone through all my devices. It is real magic and you will definitely want to learn more about it! owo