How to mount rclone on Android?

Question

I had rclone mount my Google Drive on my Android 7 box with the Magisk module and Termux. But it has stopped working and now there's only an empty folder. This is the rclone log:

2020/06/03 07:33:54 mount helper error: CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE "fusermount": library "libandroid-support.so" not found
2020/06/03 07:33:54 Fatal error: failed to mount FUSE fs: fusermount: signal: aborted.

I just want to mount rclone on my rooted HiMedia Q10 Pro Android TV box so that I can view my GDrive as a permanent folder on my file system.

Answer 1

The Magisk module you linked is using fusermount binary from this thread which is built for Termux environment. But LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable is not being set properly in the module, so the error occurs. A simple approach is to use static fusermount binary, I already posted in the same thread.

rclone uses FUSE which you can mount manually from CLI without relying on Magisk module. I have explained in detail How to bind mount a folder inside /sdcard with correct permissions?. Some issues related to using FUSE on Android are explained in this post. Here I'm describing steps briefly related to rclone only. I'm using Termux for explanation. You can use some other terminal emulator app or adb shell with differences in paths.

Instructions below require that you have a rooted device.

• Install rclone binary available in Termux repos (by running pkg install rclone) or download from official website official website. Download static fusermount binary from here (available for both aarch64 and armeabi-v7a). Extract the downloaded archive files. I assume that downloaded files are placed in /sdcard/Download/.

• For ease of repeated use create a shell script /sdcard/Download/rclone_mount.sh using any text editor. Copy/paste the following lines:

  #!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/bash -e
  
  # must be run with root privileges
  [ $(id -u) -eq 0 ] || exec su --mount-master -c "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH HOME=$HOME PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin $0"
  
  # make sure to be in root mount namespace
  [ $(readlink /proc/1/ns/mnt) = $(readlink /proc/self/ns/mnt) ] || nsenter -t 1 -m -- "$0"
  
  Unmount() {
      fusermount -u /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/GDrive 2>/dev/null || :
  }
  
  # make sure it's not already mounted
  Unmount
  
  # make sure it's unmounted after rclone is killed
  trap 'sleep 1; Unmount' EXIT
  
  # mount remote in /sdcard/
  rclone -v mount GDrive: /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/GDrive --gid 9997 --dir-perms 0771 --file-perms 0660 --umask=0 --allow-other
  

  See rclone mount manual for explanation on commandline options. Some options may impact the performance.

• Make sure Termux is granted Storage permission and execute following commands:

  ~$ cd
  ~$ pkg install -y util-linux
  ~$ mkdir -p bin /sdcard/GDrive
  ~$ cp /sdcard/Download/{fusermount,rclone,rclone_mount.sh} bin/
  ~$ chmod -R 0755 bin
  ~$ dos2unix bin/rclone_mount.sh
  ~$ bin/rclone config
  

  Follow the instruction on screen (see rclone config manual for details) to create configuration file (~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf) for Google Drive (or whatever remote service you want to use). I assume you chose the remote name GDrive (as used in above script).

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Whenever you need to mount rclone, open Termux and run bin/rclone_mount.sh (or create Termux Widget to run the script from home screen conveniently).

• All apps with Storage permissions should be able to explore GDrive folder (bind mounting to read and default views isn't necessarily required). But some apps may crash due to slow network activity, others may require more caching (see options) etc.
• Trigger a Media Scan if e.g. pictures on remote don't appear in gallery app.
• When done press Ctrl ^C to stop rclone process and mount.