Adesh Kadambi

Mounting Proton Drive on Linux

Nov 15, 20243 min read

Like many privacy-conscious users, I switched to Proton Drive for my cloud storage needs. I have multiple devices, a MacBook, an iPhone, a Windows desktop, and a Linux desktop. And while Proton Drive plays nice with most of my devices, one thing drove me crazy - no Linux client. I found myself constantly juggling between the web interface and my local files, downloading things ad-hoc whenever I needed them. It got so frustrating that I started reaching for my MacBook whenever I needed to work with files on my drive. After some digging, I discovered rclone - a command-line tool that can mount cloud storage as a local folder. Here’s how I set it up…

rclone Setup

First, I installed rclone:

sudo -v ; curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash

Then, I configured my Proton Drive remote using rclone config. The setup was straightforward - I chose a new remote, named it “proton”, selected Proton Drive from the storage options (number 42), and entered my credentials including 2FA.

rclone config
 
# make a new remote
n/s/q> n
 
# name the remote
name> proton
 
# choose the number for Proton Drive
Storage> 42
 
# enter username
user> you@proton.me
 
# select type in your own password & then type in password
y/g/n> y
 
# enter 2fa code
2fa> 123456
 
# keep the remote
y/e/d> y

I created a simple mount point:

mkdir ProtonDrive

At this point, I could just run the following command and I’d be good to go:

rclone mount proton: ProtonDrive --vfs-cache-mode writes

Except, this means I would have to re-run this script every time I boot up my system. Let’s set up automatic mounting at startup.

Automatic Mounting

Create a systemd service file:

sudo nvim /etc/systemd/system/rclone-proton.service

Add the following content to the file:

[Unit]
Description=Proton Drive Mount
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
 
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount proton: /home/YOUR_USERNAME/ProtonDrive --vfs-cache-mode writes
Restart=on-failure
User=YOUR_USERNAME
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

TIP

Make sure you replace YOUR_USERNAME with your own user name.

Finally, I enabled and started the service:

sudo systemctl enable rclone-proton
sudo systemctl start rclone-proton

Check the status of the service:

systemctl status rclone-proton
 
# this should output something like..
 
● rclone-proton.service - Proton Drive Mount
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/rclone-proton.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2024-11-27 17:11:49 EST; 43ms ago
   Main PID: 143365 (rclone)
      Tasks: 26 (limit: 76030)
     Memory: 15.4M
        CPU: 47ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/rclone-proton.service
             └─143365 /usr/bin/rclone mount proton: /home/<username>/ProtonDrive --vfs-cache-mode writes

Now my Proton Drive automatically mounts at startup! No more switching to my MacBook or dealing with the web interface - my files are right where I need them, when I need them.

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