Access Google at IU My Drive from Research Desktop (RED)

• Overview
• Use Firefox on the RED desktop
• Use rclone in a Terminal window
• Use the Caja file browser
• Get help

Overview

Following are methods for accessing your space in Google at IU My Drive from Research Desktop (RED). However, the preferred method for transferring files, especially files larger than 1 GB, is the IU Globus Web App; for more, see Use the IU Globus Web App to transfer data to and from your accounts on IU's research computing and storage systems.

Use Firefox on the RED desktop

From RED, open Firefox, and then:

Use rclone in a Terminal window

From a Terminal window in RED you can use rclone to access your Google at IU My Drive space. You can copy files from the command line or mount your Google at IU My Drive space as a directory:

• Use rclone commands to copy files: In RED, open a Terminal window, and then:
  1. Add rclone to your user environment; on the command prompt, enter:

     module load rclone

  2. Authorize rclone to access your Google at IU My Drive files:
     1. On the command prompt, enter (replace googlemydrive with label of your choosing, which will be added to the rclone config file):

        rclone config create googlemydrive drive

     2. Firefox will open.

        On the Google sign-in page, enter your Google at IU username (your_username@iu.edu), and complete an IU Login.

     3. When prompted to authorize access to your Google at IU My Drive files, click Accept.
     Note:

     You need to authorize access only once. To check what (if any) remote destinations already are authorized, use the command rclone listremotes. For detailed instructions, see rclone).
  3. Use rclone commands in combination with the label you created for your Google at IU My Drive space (for example, googlemydrive). For a list of commands and links to their help files, see Rclone Commands. UITS recommends reading about the rclone copy, rclone ls, and rclone tree commands.
• Mount your Google at IU My Drive to a directory: In RED, open a Terminal window, and then:
  1. If you haven't already done so, add rclone to your user environment and authorize rclone to access your Google at IU My Drive files; see the first two steps in the instructions above.
  2. Use mkdir to create a mount directory for your Google at IU My Drive; for example, the following command creates a directory named GDrive on your RED desktop.

     mkdir ~/Desktop/GDrive

  3. Use rclone mount and the label you created for your Google at IU My Drive (for example, googlemydrive) to the mount your Google at IU My Drive space to the mount directory you created in the previous step; for example, to mount a Google at IU My Drive space labeled googlemydrive to the example mount directory created in the previous step (~/Desktop/GDrive), use the following command:

     nohup rclone mount googlemydrive: ~/Desktop/GDrive &

     The program will continue running in the background.

  Note:

  Unless you have a clear need to use this method, UITS recommends using one of the other options to access your Google at IU My Drive files. Following are known issues with using rclone to mount your Google at IU My Drive space:

  • In some cases, rclone may not unmount your Google at IU My Drive directory cleanly. If you try to unmount your Google at IU My Drive (by killing the rclone process that is maintaining the mount), you will not be able to remount it on the same directory until UITS reboots all RED nodes during the regularly scheduled maintenance window. Also, if you end your session, or the session is terminated for some other reason, the mounted directory most likely will remain locked until all RED nodes are rebooted. If this happens, you can mount Google at IU My Drive to a different directory.
  • Google Docs will be listed with size -1 when you use the command rclone ls and with size 0 when you invoke a command that uses the VFS layer (for example, rclone mount or rclone serve). This occurs because rclone can't determine the actual file sizes without first downloading the files. Google Docs transfer correctly when you use rclone sync and rclone copy because rclone ignores file sizes when transferring files.
  • Although a Google at IU My Drive mount is suitable for small data transfers (under 1 GB), larger data transfers may fail without any warning or errors.
  • Your Google at IU My Drive mount will be visible only on the RED node on which your RED session is running. It will not be accessible from Quartz login or compute nodes. Do not submit jobs that reference files from your Google at IU My Drive mount; instead, copy the files your job needs to your Slate, Slate-Project, or Slate-Scratch space, and then reference them in that location.
  • On a RED node, any application that attempts to read from or write to your Google at IU My Drive mount directory will likely throw an error. Even if it works, I/O will be at least 10 times slower than it would be when referencing files on Slate-Scratch or in your home directory on Quartz. Copying a full data set to your Slate-Scratch or home directory space will be less time-consuming than computing with data from your Google at IU My Drive mount.

    For example, if your application references data stored in your Slate-Scratch space, its I/O activity may require 10 minutes out of a 60-minute run time; however, if your application references data from your Google at IU My Drive mount, its I/O activity will require 100 minutes and extend your job's overall run time to 160 minutes.

Use the Caja file browser

Use the Gnome Control Center to set up access to your Google at IU My Drive space from the Caja file browser on RED:

1. Open a Terminal window, and then enter the following command:

   env XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center online-accounts

   The Gnome Control Center window will open:

   

2. Under "Add an account", click Google.

3. On the Google sign-in page, enter your Google at IU username (your_username@iu.edu), and complete an IU Login.

4. When prompted to allow Gnome to access your Google at IU My Drive account, scroll down and click Allow.
5. If prompted to create a keyring password, enter a password you will remember. You'll need this password to reopen the connection to your Google at IU My Drive space when you log into RED again.
6. Open the Caja file browser and, in the left panel, look under "Devices". You should see an item labeled with your email address. Click that item to access your Google at IU My Drive space. You may need to wait briefly for the contents to become visible the first time you access it.

Get help