Remote profiles¶

A remote profile stores the configuration for a remote storage provider — S3 cloud storage, an FTP or SFTP server, Google Drive, OneDrive, WebDAV or a local folder. MonitorHub supports two routes to a destination, and every remote profile records which one it uses.

Create one interactively:

mhub profile new

Route 1: the built-in S3 handler¶

The S3 handler is built into MonitorHub and speaks the S3 protocol directly, so no rclone installation is needed. It works with:

Amazon S3 (tested)
Cloudflare R2 (tested)
IDrive E2 (tested)
Backblaze B2 (tested)
Oracle Cloud Object Storage
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Alibaba Cloud OSS

S3-compatible providers represent the vast majority of the object storage market. The handler is selected with remote_handler: s3, which is what profile new stores for an S3 profile.

Route 2: rclone¶

Any provider without a native handler is delegated to rclone, the Swiss army knife of cloud transfer. Install rclone for your operating system first:

rclone version

Then either create a profile interactively (mhub profile new) or import the profiles you already have:

mhub profile import

The import reads an existing rclone.conf and lets you choose which profiles to bring over: enter 0 to import all, enter a profile number to add profiles one at a time, or press Enter to stop (nothing is imported when no profile was selected). The import is a one-time copy — from then on MonitorHub is the source of truth for that profile's configuration.

Choosing the route per profile¶

The remote_handler setting decides how an S3 profile is executed:

`remote_handler`	Effect
`s3`	The built-in S3 handler (what `profile new` stores for an S3 profile)
`rclone`	The profile is delegated to rclone

Switch routes by answering the rclone question during mhub profile edit, or by setting remote_handler in the profile configuration. mhub profile show displays the current value. Use the rclone route when you want rclone's transfer tuning for S3 — for example transfers, chunk_size, storage_class or the object-lock options.

MonitorHub owns the configuration¶

An rclone-routed profile does not need a section in rclone.conf: MonitorHub passes the profile's settings to the rclone process through its environment, and rclone resolves them as the remote:

RCLONE_CONFIG_MY_REMOTE_TYPE=s3
RCLONE_CONFIG_MY_REMOTE_PROVIDER=Other
RCLONE_CONFIG_MY_REMOTE_ENDPOINT=https://example.invalid
RCLONE_CONFIG_MY_REMOTE_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
RCLONE_CONFIG_MY_REMOTE_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

The variables are set per rclone process, so they are local to the transfer that belongs to that profile: other monitors, other rclone runs and your shell are unaffected, and secrets never appear on the command line. If an rclone.conf section with the same name exists, the MonitorHub settings win.

A profile name may contain any characters — rclone itself is happy with dashes (s3-test). The name is only normalised for the environment-variable channel, which allows letters, digits and underscores, so a profile named s3-test is used as s3_test for rclone; the mapping is logged at DEBUG level when the two differ.

rclone options per profile¶

Per-profile rclone options live in the profile config as rclone_options. They mirror an rclone.conf section: backend properties use their bare rclone name (the backend is implied by the profile type), while global session flags keep their own name:

"rclone_options": {
  "transfers": 8,
  "chunk_size": "16M",
  "upload_concurrency": 8,
  "storage_class": "STANDARD",
  "object_lock_mode": "GOVERNANCE",
  "object_lock_legal_hold_status": "ON",
  "object_lock_retain_until_date": "2030-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "bucket_object_lock_enabled": true
}

A backend property becomes RCLONE_<BACKEND>_<OPTION> (no_check_bucket becomes RCLONE_S3_NO_CHECK_BUCKET) and a global flag becomes RCLONE_<OPTION> (transfers becomes RCLONE_TRANSFERS). The s3_ prefix is accepted but optional: profile edit strips it so the stored name matches rclone.conf, and a name that is already prefixed (s3_chunk_size) keeps working because MonitorHub resolves each option against the installed rclone's flags. Option names are case-insensitive and accept the flag spelling (no-check-upload, --ftp-no-check-upload); profile edit normalises them to the lowercase underscore rclone.conf form and rewrites the profile's existing options on save, so no-check-upload, NO_CHECK_UPLOAD and no_check_upload all store no_check_upload.

Option support depends on your rclone

Object lock needs an rclone that supports it (1.7x; check with rclone help flags | grep object-lock). rclone silently ignores options it does not know, so MonitorHub logs a warning naming any configured option the installed rclone cannot apply, and profile edit rejects an unknown name as it is typed (the check is skipped when rclone is not installed).

Also note that transfers only applies to folder copies (backup and restore monitors); a single-file instant upload is tuned with s3_chunk_size and s3_upload_concurrency instead.

Editing and testing¶

mhub profile edit          # prompts for the profile
mhub profile show          # shows every profile and its remote_handler
mhub profile test          # dry-run test of a profile
mhub profile test --live   # execute with sample values

mhub profile edit edits every remote profile. An s3 profile using the built-in handler keeps its provider/credentials/region wizard, while an rclone-routed profile — an imported ftp/sftp/drive/... remote, or an s3 profile switched to rclone — is edited property by property: each backend option is shown with its current value and pressing Enter keeps it. The profile's rclone_options are entered as key=value pairs using the bare rclone property name (enter none to remove them).

Editing starts by prompting for the profile name, so a remote profile can be renamed while you edit it; press Enter to keep the current name.

Next: attach the profile to a monitor in Your first monitor.