8 ms·

Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd

148 points by cf100clunk 11mo ago

Havoc 11mo ago
Neat. I did just buy one of their packages so this will be useful
augusto-moura 11mo ago
Support for proton drive on rclone is still on beta [1], Proton, AFAIK, doesn't provide documented official APIs for accessing their Drive. Much of the work on the rclone plugin was made via reverse engineering and reading Proton's open source projects code [1]: https://rclone.org/protondrive/ https://rclone.org/protondrive/
- prism56 11mo ago
  My rclone for proton stopped working this week and I just cannot get it working. It's looking likely the support will be dropped as the dev is no longer working on it and it's not finished. Hopefully proton will hurry up with their SDK. Through the rclone GUI I can access and mount the folders and files but I cannot get any auto rclone commands to actually transfer any files.
- zacwest 11mo ago
  They are working on an SDK, which they will use for their own Linux client: https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-sdk-preview https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-sdk-preview
  - augusto-moura 11mo ago
    Good to know! Last time I checked on this was last year, so they took a long time to announce anything
- quasigod 11mo ago
  Really glad to hear theres effort going towards a drive client on Linux, its my biggest gripe with Proton by far. I hardly end up using it because its a pain to use on Linux and Android.
bjt12345 11mo ago
Surely there's better technological solutions for encrypting block data in the cloud with lower risks of service ensh*tification?
- jszymborski 11mo ago
  The state of things isn't great IMHO. Im not sure I trust any of EncFS, CryFS, and gocryptfs. Many leak metadata and/or have serious security concerns.
  - karlgkk 11mo ago
    Metadata leakage is a fundamental issue when you go from block to object. I can think of some schemes that would help but they’re all kinda nasty lol
    - jszymborski 11mo ago
      Of course, and I didnt intend to downplay the efforts of those projects. Just pointing out that they don't meet the requirements of most threat models.
      - karlgkk 11mo ago
        I kinda gotta push back on that Most threat models don’t include state level or equally well funded/motivated actors. Some of those, in theory, are fine for most corporate usage - when used or implemented by knowledgeable people. Shipping it as a consumer product is a bit rougher of a story, although most companies seem to cope by not giving a shit (lol, oof)
  - ysnp 11mo ago
    Can you detail the current metadata and security problems with CryFS? Do they also extend/apply to securefs?
- somat 11mo ago
  luks on an iscsi drive Joking of course, but I am playing around with a similar setup, I should try it over the actual internet and see how much it sucks. Now I am arguing with myself if you would want to run it over an encrypted tunnel. Theoretically no, but drive encryption is not really designed to protect data in transit who knows what sidechannel data would leak, so maybe... and the tunnel probably has better authentication than iscsi
jerrythegerbil 11mo ago
As a (previous) customer of Proton from many years and a user of their drive product, you should be aware that earlier this year the drive API endpoints began to block their own VPN egress quite often for rate limiting. They also block many cloud provider’s egress. They also don’t officially support rclone, and their changing API spec often breaks the compatibility. I saw the writing on the wall and migrated rapidly earlier this year ahead of crypto product launches ahead of the email fiasco. It was hard to get data back out, even then. Proton still stands for privacy. But the dark patterns for lock-in I can do without. Hetzner Storage boxes with rclone and the “crypt” option are a drop-in replacement, at ~$40 for 20TB. That’s where I went instead.
- SilverElfin 11mo ago
  How can someone not familiar with the technical details use the alternative you suggest? Is there software (even if paid) that can sync to it?
  - jerrythegerbil 11mo ago
    A non technical person would probably Google “Hetzner Storage Box”, click the first link, and read the page that answers all of those questions. There is many free software suites that Hetzner Storage box supports, up to and including official support for rclone (the free tool used in the post we’re replying to). https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box
    - varispeed 11mo ago
      How would you handle end to end encryption?
      - teraflop 11mo ago
        Probably using rclone (the free tool used in the post we’re replying to).
- 11mo ago
butz 11mo ago
Is it possible to "just sync some files" to Proton Drive in user space without root access? As a paying Proton Mail customer I am annoyed about situation with Proton Drive and non-existing official support for Linux. On the other hand, they will probably drop some kind of electron wrapper of few hundred megabytes, and that won't be useful either. What about alternatives? Should I just use Filen instead?
- ianopolous 11mo ago
  You might be interested in Peergos [0][1] (creator here) which has official Linux apps, is E2EE, fully open source (including the server), and self-hostable. It's also recommended by privacy guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cloud/#peergos https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cloud/#peergos [0] https://peergos.org https://peergos.org [1] https://github.com/peergos/peergos https://github.com/peergos/peergos
- quasigod 11mo ago
  You dont need root access to sync files with rclone
aborsy 11mo ago
Why do you need cloud, if you don’t need public sharing? You can connect to a 2-bay NAS with 20 TB of storage at home with a VPN. Fast, private, secure, practically unlimited storage, under your control. That much storage will be very expensive in the cloud. Proton is like 120$/year for 500GB. You can also run unlimited applications for free on the same nas: photo management, streaming with apps like plex etc. Each of those apps is an additional cost in the cloud.
- vohk 11mo ago
  I keep a home server for exactly that reason but I still use cloud for some things to have an off site copy as well. There are some things I don't want to risk losing over burst pipes, a fire, burglary, power surges, etc.
- kykat 11mo ago
  Because of 3-2-1 Backup Rule, it's great to have a cloud backup for things that you don't want to lose. It's also great if you move frequently, or travel a lot.
  - aborsy 11mo ago
    Sure, but you don’t need to pay a premium for end to end encryption like with proton. You would encrypt (all or part of) your NAS client side with your software of choice (I use restic) and ship it anywhere off site: could be cheapest cloud, or another location you have access to.
    - kykat 11mo ago
      True, I use proton for their mail and VPN, but use hetzner for bulk backups
- ImJamal 11mo ago
  Because your house might be destroyed with the drives?
- twintwinetwolf 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
ranger_danger 11mo ago
The project appears to be AI-generated to my eyes
- evil-olive 11mo ago
  156-line emoji-studded readme [0] for a 62-line shell script [1] yeah, this sets off my vibe-coding-detector as well. the readme recommends installing fuse3 with Pacman, but then installing rclone by downloading the binary to /usr/local/bin, even though there's an Arch package [2] for it. I don't think that's a recommendation an experienced Arch user would ever make (at least, not without mentioning the alternatives) 0: https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/README.md?plain=1 https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/RE... 1: https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/setup-proton-mount.sh https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/se... 2: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rclone/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rclone/
bl4kers 11mo ago
Tresorit is much better than Proton Drive in almost every way
- sxndmxn 11mo ago
  nah all cloud storage providers are shit
hamonrye 11mo ago
[dead]
sxndmxn 11mo ago
user uses something that isn't officially supported and finds out it doesn't work
Smitchell712 11mo ago
You gave some help. thanks!

148 points by cf100clunk 11mo ago

Havoc 11mo ago

Neat. I did just buy one of their packages so this will be useful

Support for proton drive on rclone is still on beta [1], Proton, AFAIK, doesn't provide documented official APIs for accessing their Drive. Much of the work on the rclone plugin was made via reverse engineering and reading Proton's open source projects code [1]: https://rclone.org/protondrive/ https://rclone.org/protondrive/

prism56 11mo ago
My rclone for proton stopped working this week and I just cannot get it working. It's looking likely the support will be dropped as the dev is no longer working on it and it's not finished. Hopefully proton will hurry up with their SDK. Through the rclone GUI I can access and mount the folders and files but I cannot get any auto rclone commands to actually transfer any files.
zacwest 11mo ago
They are working on an SDK, which they will use for their own Linux client: https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-sdk-preview https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-sdk-preview
- augusto-moura 11mo ago
  Good to know! Last time I checked on this was last year, so they took a long time to announce anything
quasigod 11mo ago
Really glad to hear theres effort going towards a drive client on Linux, its my biggest gripe with Proton by far. I hardly end up using it because its a pain to use on Linux and Android.

bjt12345 11mo ago

Surely there's better technological solutions for encrypting block data in the cloud with lower risks of service ensh*tification?

jszymborski 11mo ago
The state of things isn't great IMHO. Im not sure I trust any of EncFS, CryFS, and gocryptfs. Many leak metadata and/or have serious security concerns.
- karlgkk 11mo ago
  Metadata leakage is a fundamental issue when you go from block to object. I can think of some schemes that would help but they’re all kinda nasty lol
  - jszymborski 11mo ago
    Of course, and I didnt intend to downplay the efforts of those projects. Just pointing out that they don't meet the requirements of most threat models.
    - karlgkk 11mo ago
      I kinda gotta push back on that Most threat models don’t include state level or equally well funded/motivated actors. Some of those, in theory, are fine for most corporate usage - when used or implemented by knowledgeable people. Shipping it as a consumer product is a bit rougher of a story, although most companies seem to cope by not giving a shit (lol, oof)
- ysnp 11mo ago
  Can you detail the current metadata and security problems with CryFS? Do they also extend/apply to securefs?
somat 11mo ago
luks on an iscsi drive Joking of course, but I am playing around with a similar setup, I should try it over the actual internet and see how much it sucks. Now I am arguing with myself if you would want to run it over an encrypted tunnel. Theoretically no, but drive encryption is not really designed to protect data in transit who knows what sidechannel data would leak, so maybe... and the tunnel probably has better authentication than iscsi

jerrythegerbil 11mo ago

As a (previous) customer of Proton from many years and a user of their drive product, you should be aware that earlier this year the drive API endpoints began to block their own VPN egress quite often for rate limiting. They also block many cloud provider’s egress. They also don’t officially support rclone, and their changing API spec often breaks the compatibility. I saw the writing on the wall and migrated rapidly earlier this year ahead of crypto product launches ahead of the email fiasco. It was hard to get data back out, even then. Proton still stands for privacy. But the dark patterns for lock-in I can do without. Hetzner Storage boxes with rclone and the “crypt” option are a drop-in replacement, at ~$40 for 20TB. That’s where I went instead.

SilverElfin 11mo ago
How can someone not familiar with the technical details use the alternative you suggest? Is there software (even if paid) that can sync to it?
- jerrythegerbil 11mo ago
  A non technical person would probably Google “Hetzner Storage Box”, click the first link, and read the page that answers all of those questions. There is many free software suites that Hetzner Storage box supports, up to and including official support for rclone (the free tool used in the post we’re replying to). https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box
  - varispeed 11mo ago
    How would you handle end to end encryption?
    - teraflop 11mo ago
      Probably using rclone (the free tool used in the post we’re replying to).
11mo ago

butz 11mo ago

Is it possible to "just sync some files" to Proton Drive in user space without root access? As a paying Proton Mail customer I am annoyed about situation with Proton Drive and non-existing official support for Linux. On the other hand, they will probably drop some kind of electron wrapper of few hundred megabytes, and that won't be useful either. What about alternatives? Should I just use Filen instead?

ianopolous 11mo ago
You might be interested in Peergos [0][1] (creator here) which has official Linux apps, is E2EE, fully open source (including the server), and self-hostable. It's also recommended by privacy guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cloud/#peergos https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cloud/#peergos [0] https://peergos.org https://peergos.org [1] https://github.com/peergos/peergos https://github.com/peergos/peergos
quasigod 11mo ago
You dont need root access to sync files with rclone

aborsy 11mo ago

Why do you need cloud, if you don’t need public sharing? You can connect to a 2-bay NAS with 20 TB of storage at home with a VPN. Fast, private, secure, practically unlimited storage, under your control. That much storage will be very expensive in the cloud. Proton is like 120$/year for 500GB. You can also run unlimited applications for free on the same nas: photo management, streaming with apps like plex etc. Each of those apps is an additional cost in the cloud.

vohk 11mo ago
I keep a home server for exactly that reason but I still use cloud for some things to have an off site copy as well. There are some things I don't want to risk losing over burst pipes, a fire, burglary, power surges, etc.
kykat 11mo ago
Because of 3-2-1 Backup Rule, it's great to have a cloud backup for things that you don't want to lose. It's also great if you move frequently, or travel a lot.
- aborsy 11mo ago
  Sure, but you don’t need to pay a premium for end to end encryption like with proton. You would encrypt (all or part of) your NAS client side with your software of choice (I use restic) and ship it anywhere off site: could be cheapest cloud, or another location you have access to.
  - kykat 11mo ago
    True, I use proton for their mail and VPN, but use hetzner for bulk backups
ImJamal 11mo ago
Because your house might be destroyed with the drives?
twintwinetwolf 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

ranger_danger 11mo ago

The project appears to be AI-generated to my eyes

evil-olive 11mo ago
156-line emoji-studded readme [0] for a 62-line shell script [1] yeah, this sets off my vibe-coding-detector as well. the readme recommends installing fuse3 with Pacman, but then installing rclone by downloading the binary to /usr/local/bin, even though there's an Arch package [2] for it. I don't think that's a recommendation an experienced Arch user would ever make (at least, not without mentioning the alternatives) 0: https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/README.md?plain=1 https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/RE... 1: https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/setup-proton-mount.sh https://github.com/dadtronics/protondrive-linux/blob/main/se... 2: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rclone/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rclone/

bl4kers 11mo ago

Tresorit is much better than Proton Drive in almost every way

sxndmxn 11mo ago
nah all cloud storage providers are shit

hamonrye 11mo ago

[dead]

sxndmxn 11mo ago

user uses something that isn't officially supported and finds out it doesn't work

Smitchell712 11mo ago

You gave some help. thanks!