(This guide was written specifically for Ubuntu 16.04, however rclone is compatible with many operating systems)
Throughout my somewhat short, definitely amazing journey with linux and ubuntu, I have often had the need to sync local files to the cloud, and wasn't exactly sure of the best way to do this.
Backing up files for example is always a task for which i'd prefer to use the cloud, rather than external media. I've also been working on a couple github projects - rclone is perfect for pushing local data to a repo as well.
You can use it to sync files to various cloud providers, with a relatively simple command line interface. Best of all, it's free as is usually the case with ubuntu/linux tools.
I've also put together a script that should make downloading and installing rclone a snap!
sudo apt-get update
mkdir ~/rclone
cd ~/rclone
wget https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-v1.39-linux-amd64.zip
unzip rclone-v1.39-linux-amd64.zip
cd ~/rclone/rclone-v1.39-linux-amd64
./rclone
The shell script above will update all applications, download the rclone zip archive, and extract the contents to a folder it creates: ~/rclone
It will then run rclone once so you can see the terminal commands associated with the tool.
Be sure to check out the official rclone website for more info:
https://www.rclone.org
The rclone wiki can be found here:
https://github.com/ncw/rclone/wiki