Huawei Drive

Paths are specified as huaweidrive:path

Huawei Drive paths may be as deep as required, e.g. huaweidrive:directory/subdirectory.

Configuration

The initial setup for Huawei Drive involves getting a token from Huawei Drive which you need to do in your browser. rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

No remotes found, make a new one?
n) New remote
r) Rename remote
c) Copy remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
n/r/c/s/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
[snip]
XX / Huawei Drive
   \ "huaweidrive"
[snip]
Storage> huaweidrive
OAuth Client Id - leave blank to use rclone's default.
client_id> 
OAuth Client Secret - leave blank to use rclone's default.
client_secret>
Remote config
Use web browser to automatically authenticate rclone with remote?
 * Say Y if the machine running rclone has a web browser you can use
 * Say N if running rclone on a (remote) machine without web browser access
If not sure try Y. If Y failed, try N.
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...
Got code
Configuration complete.
Options:
- type: huaweidrive
- client_id: 
- client_secret: 
- token: {"access_token":"XXX","token_type":"Bearer","refresh_token":"XXX","expiry":"2024-03-16T13:57:58.955387075Z"}
Keep this "remote" remote?
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

See the remote setup docs for how to set it up on a machine without an internet-connected web browser available.

Note that rclone runs a webserver on your local machine to collect the token as returned from Huawei if using web browser to automatically authenticate. This only runs from the moment it opens your browser to the moment you get back the verification code. This is on http://127.0.0.1:53682/ and it may require you to unblock it temporarily if you are running a host firewall, or use manual mode.

You can then use it like this,

List directories in top level of your drive

rclone lsd remote:

List all the files in your drive

rclone ls remote:

To copy a local directory to a drive directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source remote:backup

Getting your own Client ID and Secret

When you use rclone with Huawei Drive in its default configuration you are using rclone's client_id. This is shared between all the rclone users. There is a global rate limit on the number of queries per second that each client_id can do set by Huawei.

It is strongly recommended to use your own client ID as the default rclone ID is heavily used. If you have multiple services running, it is recommended to use a separate client ID for each service to avoid rate limiting issues.

Here is how to create your own Huawei Drive client ID for rclone:

Follow the detailed guides for complete setup instructions:

• Huawei HMS Core Web App Preparations
• Huawei HMS Core Server Preparations

Rclone uses the web application access method to connect to Huawei Drive. Before starting, you need to implement quick login authorization through Huawei Account Open Service. With user authorization credentials, rclone can call Huawei Cloud Drive Service APIs.

Create Server Application

Before accessing Drive service, developers need to create a server application first. For details, please refer to the WEB Application Access Development Preparation section in the "Huawei Account Service Development Guide".

Enable Drive Application Switch

1. Log in to the AppGallery Connect website and click "My Projects".
2. Find your project in the project list, select the application that needs to access Drive in the project, and click "API Management".
3. In the "API Management" area of the "Project Settings" page, click the switch on the right side of Drive Kit to ensure the switch is in the open state.

Sign Huawei Cloud Drive Privacy Notice and User Agreement

Guide users to visit https://cloud.huawei.com/. First-time users need to sign the agreement before they can use Huawei Cloud Drive Service.

Application Access to Obtain Authentication Credential Access Token

Applications accessing Drive should use authentication credential Access Token. For specific acquisition methods, please refer to the WEB Application Access Development Guide section in the "Huawei Account Service Development Guide".

Key steps summary:

1. Log into the Huawei Developer Console with your Huawei account.

2. Create a new project or select an existing project.

3. Go to "Manage APIs" and enable the "Drive Kit" API.

4. Click on "Credentials" in the left side panel.

5. Click "Create Credentials" and choose "OAuth client ID".

6. Choose "Web application" as the application type.

7. Add http://localhost:53682/ to the "Authorized redirect URIs".

8. Click "Create" and note down the Client ID and Client Secret.

9. Provide the noted client ID and client secret to rclone during configuration.

Scopes

Rclone uses the following OAuth2 scopes when accessing Huawei Drive:

• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive - Full access to Huawei Drive files (excluding application data folder)
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.file - Access to files created by the application
• openid - OpenID Connect authentication
• profile - Access to basic profile information

The drive.file scope is included in the default set used by rclone.

Alternative scopes available (not used by rclone by default):

• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.appdata - Access to application data folder
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.readonly - Read-only access to file metadata and content
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.metadata - Read/write access to file metadata only
• https://www.huawei.com/auth/drive.metadata.readonly - Read-only access to file metadata only

The default scopes provide read/write access to all files in your Huawei Drive.

Modification times and hashes

Huawei Drive does not support setting modification times. The API always uses server-side timestamps, so file modification times from the source are not preserved during upload. Modification times are available as read-only metadata (mtime, btime).

Hash algorithm SHA256 is supported for file integrity verification.

Restricted filename characters

Huawei Drive has strict restrictions on file and directory names:

• Cannot contain: < > | : " * ? / \ or emoji characters
• Cannot be exactly . ..
• Maximum length: 250 bytes
• Single quotes must be escaped with \' in API calls

These restrictions are handled by rclone's encoding:

• Backslashes \ are encoded
• Invalid UTF-8 sequences are encoded
• Right-side spaces are encoded

Invalid characters will be replaced according to the encoding settings.

Resumable uploads

Huawei Drive supports resumable uploads for files larger than the upload cutoff (default 20MB). Files are uploaded in chunks which allows for recovery from network interruptions.

File size limits

The maximum file size for Huawei Drive is 50 GiB.

Quota information

To view your current quota you can use the rclone about remote: command which will display your usage and quota information.

Standard options

Here are the Standard options specific to huaweidrive (Huawei Drive).

--huaweidrive-client-id

OAuth Client Id.

Leave blank normally.

Properties:

• Config: client_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_CLIENT_ID
• Type: string
• Required: false

--huaweidrive-client-secret

OAuth Client Secret.

Leave blank normally.

Properties:

• Config: client_secret
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_CLIENT_SECRET
• Type: string
• Required: false

Advanced options

Here are the Advanced options specific to huaweidrive (Huawei Drive).

--huaweidrive-token

OAuth Access Token as a JSON blob.

Properties:

• Config: token
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_TOKEN
• Type: string
• Required: false

--huaweidrive-auth-url

Auth server URL.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Properties:

• Config: auth_url
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_AUTH_URL
• Type: string
• Required: false

--huaweidrive-token-url

Token server url.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Properties:

• Config: token_url
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_TOKEN_URL
• Type: string
• Required: false

--huaweidrive-client-credentials

Use client credentials OAuth flow.

This will use the OAUTH2 client Credentials Flow as described in RFC 6749.

Note that this option is NOT supported by all backends.

Properties:

• Config: client_credentials
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_CLIENT_CREDENTIALS
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--huaweidrive-root-folder-id

ID of the root folder.

Normally this is auto-detected, but if it fails or you want to speed up startup, you can set it manually.

Leave blank normally.

Properties:

• Config: root_folder_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_ROOT_FOLDER_ID
• Type: string
• Required: false

--huaweidrive-chunk-size

Upload chunk size.

Must be a power of 2 >= 256k and <= 64MB.

Properties:

• Config: chunk_size
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_CHUNK_SIZE
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 8Mi

--huaweidrive-list-chunk

Size of listing chunk 1-1000.

Properties:

• Config: list_chunk
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_LIST_CHUNK
• Type: int
• Default: 1000

--huaweidrive-upload-cutoff

Cutoff for switching to resumable upload.

Any files larger than this will be uploaded using resumable upload. The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 20 MiB (Huawei Drive API limit for single request uploads).

Properties:

• Config: upload_cutoff
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_UPLOAD_CUTOFF
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 20Mi

--huaweidrive-encoding

The encoding for the backend.

See the encoding section in the overview for more info.

Properties:

• Config: encoding
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_ENCODING
• Type: Encoding
• Default: Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Question,Asterisk,Pipe,BackSlash,Del,Ctl,LeftSpace,LeftPeriod,LeftTilde,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot

--huaweidrive-description

Description of the remote.

Properties:

• Config: description
• Env Var: RCLONE_HUAWEIDRIVE_DESCRIPTION
• Type: string
• Required: false

Metadata

Huawei Drive supports reading and writing custom metadata.

User metadata can be set using the "properties" field in the API. System metadata includes standard file information such as:

• content-type: MIME type of the object
• description: User-provided description
• favorite: Whether file is marked as favorite
• btime/mtime/utime: Various timestamps
• sha256: File hash
• recycled/has-thumbnail: File status flags

Custom metadata keys can be any string and will be stored in the file's properties.

Here are the possible system metadata items for the huaweidrive backend.

See the metadata docs for more info.

Limitations

Huawei Drive has some rate limiting which may cause rclone to slow down transfers to avoid hitting the limits.

File name restrictions

• File names cannot contain: < > | : " * ? / \
• File names cannot be exactly . ..
• Maximum file name length is 250 bytes
• Some unicode characters including emojis are not supported

API rate limits

Huawei Drive imposes API rate limits. Rclone automatically handles these by backing off when limits are hit.

OAuth2 token expiry

• Access tokens expire after 1 hour
• Refresh tokens expire after 180 days
• Rclone will automatically refresh tokens as needed

File size limits

• Maximum file size is 50 GiB
• Files larger than this cannot be uploaded

Upload behavior

• Files smaller than upload_cutoff (default 20MB) are uploaded in a single request using content or multipart method
• Larger files are uploaded using resumable uploads with configurable chunk size
• Maximum single chunk size for resumable uploads is 64MB
• Resumable uploads support automatic retry on network errors
• SHA256 hash verification is supported for uploaded files

Server-side operations

• Server-side copy: Files can be copied within Huawei Drive without downloading and re-uploading
• Server-side move: Files and directories can be moved/renamed on the server side
• Directory move: Entire directories can be moved with a single API call

Directory operations

• Huawei Drive supports creating empty directories
• Recursive listing is supported via --fast-list for efficient directory traversal
• Huawei Drive has a special "applicationData" folder for app-specific data (not accessible via rclone's default configuration)

Error handling

Common errors and their meanings:

• 401 Unauthorized: Invalid credentials or expired token
• 403 Forbidden: Usually indicates insufficient permissions or API quota exceeded
• 404 Not Found: File or directory does not exist
• 409 Conflict: Directory already exists
• 429 Too Many Requests: API rate limit exceeded, rclone will automatically retry

Performance tuning

For better performance:

• Increase --transfers for concurrent operations (default is 4)
• Adjust chunk_size based on your network speed and file sizes
• Use --fast-list for operations on directories with many files to reduce API calls

Making backups

Huawei Drive is suitable for backups with some considerations:

• Use rclone sync rather than rclone copy to maintain exact directory structure
• Consider using --backup-dir to preserve deleted files
• Verify transfers with --checksum flag for critical data
• Be aware of the 50 GiB file size limit for individual files

Supported features

Huawei Drive supports the following rclone features:

• Copy - Server-side copy of files
• Move - Server-side move/rename of files
• DirMove - Server-side move of directories
• ListR - Recursive listing for --fast-list
• About - Storage quota information
• Purge - Delete directory and all contents
• CleanUp - Empty the trash
• UserInfo - Get user account information
• Metadata - Read and write file metadata/properties
• ChangeNotify - Poll for remote changes (used by rclone mount and rclone rc vfs/poll-interval)

Integration with other services

Huawei Drive can be used as a backend for various rclone operations:

• Mount as a local filesystem using rclone mount
• Serve over HTTP using rclone serve http
• Serve over FTP using rclone serve ftp
• Serve over WebDAV using rclone serve webdav

Note that some operations may be slower than local storage due to API limitations and network latency.