Mounting Google Drive on Ubuntu Server with rclone

Overview

I found it quite cumbersome to share files generated on the server. So, this post covers how to mount Google Drive on a headless Ubuntu server using rclone. Since the server has no GUI browser, I used remote authorization from a local machine to obtain the OAuth token.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu server with rclone installed
• A local machine with a web browser and rclone installed
• A Google account

To install rclone on the server:

sudo apt install rclone

For the local machine, visit rclone.org/downloads or use a package manager (e.g., brew install rclone on macOS).

1. Obtain OAuth Token on Local Machine

On your local machine (the one with a browser), run:

rclone authorize "drive"

This will:

1. Open a browser window for Google login (It takes some time.)
2. Ask you to grant access to your Google Drive
3. Print a JSON token in the terminal

Copy the entire JSON block that appears between Paste the following into your remote machine ---> and <---End paste.

2. Configure rclone on the Server

Create the rclone config file on the server:

mkdir -p ~/.config/rclone

Edit ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf and add the following:

[gdrive]
type = drive
scope = drive
token = <PASTE_YOUR_TOKEN_JSON_HERE>

Replace <PASTE_YOUR_TOKEN_JSON_HERE> with the JSON token obtained in the previous step.

Verify the Connection

rclone lsd gdrive: --max-depth 1

If configured correctly, this will list the top-level folders in your Google Drive.

3. Mount Google Drive

Create a mount point and test the mount:

mkdir -p ~/google-drive
rclone mount gdrive: ~/google-drive --vfs-cache-mode writes --daemon

Verify with ls ~/google-drive to see your Drive contents.

4. Auto-Mount with systemd

To persist the mount across reboots, create a systemd user service.

Create the Service File

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

Create ~/.config/systemd/user/rclone-gdrive.service:

[Unit]
Description=Mount Google Drive with rclone
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount gdrive: %h/google-drive --vfs-cache-mode writes
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -u %h/google-drive
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

%h is a systemd specifier that expands to the user’s home directory.

Enable and Start the Service

If you previously mounted with --daemon, unmount it first:

fusermount -u ~/google-drive

Then reload systemd, enable, and start the service:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now rclone-gdrive.service

To ensure the service runs even when you are not logged in:

sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER

Verify

systemctl --user status rclone-gdrive
ls ~/google-drive

Commands

Action	Command
Check status	systemctl --user status rclone-gdrive
Stop mount	systemctl --user stop rclone-gdrive
Start mount	systemctl --user start rclone-gdrive
Disable auto-mount	systemctl --user disable rclone-gdrive
View logs	journalctl --user -u rclone-gdrive