Sia

At a glance

Capability	Support
rclone support tier	Tier 4: Experimental
Checksums	None
Modification times	Not kept: files show their upload time
Case-insensitive names	No
Duplicate names allowed	No
Server-side copy	No
Server-side move and rename	No
Folder move and rename	No: each file is moved in turn
Free space reporting	No
Empty folders	Yes
Change notifications	No
Uploads of unknown size	Yes
Public links	No

From rclone’s documentation

The rest of this page is adapted from rclone’s documentation for this backend (rclone v1.75.2, MIT licence). It is written for rclone’s command line: where it mentions a flag such as --sia-example, set the option example in the wizard’s options instead. Commands such as rclone copy aren’t part of CloudMount.

Sia (sia.tech) is a decentralized cloud storage platform based on the blockchain technology. With rclone you can use it like any other remote filesystem or mount Sia folders locally. The technology behind it involves a number of new concepts such as Siacoins and Wallet, Blockchain and Consensus, Renting and Hosting, and so on. If you are new to it, you’d better first familiarize yourself using their excellent support documentation.

Introduction

Before you can use rclone with Sia, you will need to have a running copy of Sia-UI or siad (the Sia daemon) locally on your computer or on local network (e.g. a NAS). Please follow the Get started guide and install one.

rclone interacts with Sia network by talking to the Sia daemon via HTTP API which is usually available on port 9980. By default you will run the daemon locally on the same computer so it’s safe to leave the API password blank (the API URL will be http://127.0.0.1:9980 making external access impossible).

However, if you want to access Sia daemon running on another node, for example due to memory constraints or because you want to share single daemon between several rclone and Sia-UI instances, you’ll need to make a few more provisions:

• Ensure you have Sia daemon installed directly or in a docker container because Sia-UI does not support this mode natively.
• Run it on externally accessible port, for example provide --api-addr :9980 and --disable-api-security arguments on the daemon command line.
• Enforce API password for the siad daemon via environment variable SIA_API_PASSWORD or text file named apipassword in the daemon directory.
• Set rclone backend option api_password taking it from above locations.

Notes:

1. If your wallet is locked, rclone cannot unlock it automatically. You should either unlock it in advance by using Sia-UI or via command line siac wallet unlock. Alternatively you can make siad unlock your wallet automatically upon startup by running it with environment variable SIA_WALLET_PASSWORD.
2. If siad cannot find the SIA_API_PASSWORD variable or the apipassword file in the SIA_DIR directory, it will generate a random password and store in the text file named apipassword under YOUR_HOME/.sia/ directory on Unix or C:\Users\YOUR_HOME\AppData\Local\Sia\apipassword on Windows. Remember this when you configure password in rclone.
3. The only way to use siad without API password is to run it on localhost with command line argument --authorize-api=false, but this is insecure and strongly discouraged.

Limitations

• Modification times not supported
• Checksums not supported
• rclone about not supported
• rclone can work only with Siad or Sia-UI at the moment, the SkyNet daemon is not supported yet.
• Sia does not allow control characters or symbols like question and pound signs in file names. rclone will transparently encode them for you, but you’d better be aware

Options

Standard options

The wizard asks for these when you add the drive.

api_url

Sia daemon API URL, like http://sia.daemon.host:9980.

Note that siad must run with –disable-api-security to open API port for other hosts (not recommended). Keep default if Sia daemon runs on localhost.

Type: string · Default: http://127.0.0.1:9980

api_password

Sia Daemon API Password.

Can be found in the apipassword file located in HOME/.sia/ or in the daemon directory.

NB Input to this must be obscured - see rclone obscure.

Type: string

Advanced options

The wizard shows these under Advanced options. Most drives work without changing any of them.

user_agent

Siad User Agent

Sia daemon requires the ‘Sia-Agent’ user agent by default for security

Type: string · Default: Sia-Agent

encoding

The encoding for the backend.

See the encoding section in the overview for more info.

Type: Encoding · Default: Slash,Question,Hash,Percent,Del,Ctl,InvalidUtf8,Dot

description

Description of the remote.

Type: string