Immutable only works with syncCopyMove

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

Immutable does not work outside of sync.

Docs say that

Note that only commands which transfer files (e.g. sync, copy, move) are affected by this behavior, and only modification is disallowed.

Currently immutable is supported in syncCopyMove instances, on the other hand moveOrCopyFile has no awareness of it.

What is your rclone version (output from `rclone version`)

1.53.3 / master

Ah, so I guess you are saying that if you use `--immutable when you are copying a single file then it is ignored?

Eg

$ mkdir src dst
$ echo hello > src/file2.txt 
$ rclone sync src/ dst/
$ echo alskdjflksdjflsakdjf > src/file2.txt 
$ rclone sync -vv --retries 1 --immutable src/ dst/
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.54.0-beta.5062.236aa5a70.fix-4929-union" starting with parameters ["rclone" "sync" "-vv" "--retries" "1" "--immutable" "src/" "dst/"]
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "src/"
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : Using config file from "/home/ncw/.rclone.conf"
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : fs cache: renaming cache item "src/" to be canonical "/tmp/src"
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "dst/"
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : fs cache: renaming cache item "dst/" to be canonical "/tmp/dst"
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : Local file system at /tmp/dst: Waiting for checks to finish
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : file2.txt: Sizes differ (src 21 vs dst 6)
2021/01/15 14:31:03 ERROR : file2.txt: Source and destination exist but do not match: immutable file modified
2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : Local file system at /tmp/dst: Waiting for transfers to finish
2021/01/15 14:31:03 ERROR : Local file system at /tmp/dst: not deleting files as there were IO errors
2021/01/15 14:31:03 ERROR : Local file system at /tmp/dst: not deleting directories as there were IO errors
2021/01/15 14:31:03 ERROR : Can't retry any of the errors - not attempting retries
2021/01/15 14:31:03 INFO  : 
Transferred:   	         0 / 0 Bytes, -, 0 Bytes/s, ETA -
Errors:                 1 (no need to retry)
Checks:                 1 / 1, 100%
Elapsed time:         0.0s

2021/01/15 14:31:03 DEBUG : 2 go routines active
2021/01/15 14:31:03 Failed to sync: immutable file modified

However this causes a problem

$ rclone sync -vv --retries 1 --immutable src/file2.txt dst/
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.54.0-beta.5062.236aa5a70.fix-4929-union" starting with parameters ["rclone" "sync" "-vv" "--retries" "1" "--immutable" "src/file2.txt" "dst/"]
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "src/file2.txt"
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : Using config file from "/home/ncw/.rclone.conf"
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : fs cache: adding new entry for parent of "src/file2.txt", "/tmp/src"
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "dst/"
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : fs cache: renaming cache item "dst/" to be canonical "/tmp/dst"
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : file2.txt: Sizes differ (src 21 vs dst 6)
2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : file2.txt: MD5 = 703540df67ebbec009f8500dfca7c665 OK
2021/01/15 14:31:10 INFO  : file2.txt: Copied (replaced existing)
2021/01/15 14:31:10 INFO  : 
Transferred:   	        21 / 21 Bytes, 100%, 81.904 kBytes/s, ETA 0s
Transferred:            1 / 1, 100%
Elapsed time:         0.0s

2021/01/15 14:31:10 DEBUG : 3 go routines active

Is that what you mean, or do you have other scenarios in which it goes wrong?

The immutable checking should probably be done in operations.Copy I suspect - that would mean that the checking would work everywhere.

@ncw

That is correct @ncw.

I've been running into the same issue: The --immutable flag only works when moving directories to the remote. If you try to move a single file to the remote, the --immutable flag has no effect and the remote file gets overwritten.

I had been planning to use --immutable for backups as suggested by the docs which say that the --immutable flag "can be useful as an additional layer of protection for immutable or append-only data sets (notably backup archives), where modification implies corruption and should not be propagated."

This probably got lost with everything else going on, but figured i would comment anyways.
Current rclone version is 1.63.1 as of the time i'm writing, and this is still an issue.

I was testing s3 and used a filepath as src instead of a directory.
It overwrote my test file in s3 when using the --immutable flag, which i thought should not be possible, so then googled and came across this issue.

So warning to anyone else: Be careful thinking you are safe when using --immutable.
Still only works on dir and not files.

This would be relatively easy to fix of someone wants to have a go. I can provide a roadmap of what needs to be fixed.

I have a verified workaround for this issue. Verified in that I used this very method (with some additional unrelated options to speed the transfer) to move 50 TB of data in only a few days between S3 buckets.

Create a text file and put the list of files you want to transfer in it. In my example, I will call it files.txt.
Run rclone to copy/move the files and then use the --files-from directive along with the --no-traverse directive.

Example Code:

$ cat > files.txt
file1.txt
pics/image1.jpeg
path/to/some.doc
^D
$ rclone move s3_source:bucket_A s3_dest:bucket_B --files-from files.txt --no-traverse

While I don't pretend to know the code behind this, I do have a theory that the --immutable flag works here because it's still being treated as a directory operation, but with a filter vs an explicit single-object operation.

fix(IDX): Don't overwrite CDN artifacts

fix(IDX): Don't overwrite CDN artifacts (#5438)

fix(ci): upload CDN artifacts under their bundle (intended) name (#10672

operations: make --immutable work with copyto, moveto and single file…

@hsdfat

I've merged @hsdfat fix for this to master now which means it will be in the latest beta in 15-30 minutes and released in v1.76

operations: make --immutable work with copyto, moveto and single file…

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Immutable only works with syncCopyMove #4921

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

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Immutable only works with syncCopyMove #4921

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What is the problem you are having with rclone?

What is your rclone version (output from rclone version)

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ncw commented on Jan 15, 2021

mmatczuk commented on Jan 18, 2021

andrewdbate commented on Oct 20, 2021

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ncw commented on Aug 9, 2023

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What is your rclone version (output from `rclone version`)