Microsoft OneDrive

Reach your Pitt OneDrive from portal.office.com (now branded Microsoft 365), directly at pitt.onedrive.com, or via my.pitt.edu — sign in with your Pitt credentials. A few notes on this storage:

  • Any Pitt faculty, student, or staff member can activate OneDrive by logging in.
  • Under the University agreement you get 5 TB (max file size 250 GB), increasable up to 25 TB via a ticket to the Pitt IT Help Desk; beyond that, additional 25 TB accounts/sites can be created.
  • OneDrive is not suitable for sensitive data, including personal information.

You can move data between OneDrive and CRCD storage graphically using Globus. The rest of this page covers the command-line approaches: rclone is the general-purpose tool, and for folders shared with you the OneDrive Client for Linux works better (see below). The Globus CLI can also drive transfers against the UPitt-OneDrive collection if you prefer scripting Globus.

Rclone

Rclone is a command-line tool for transferring and syncing files between local storage and OneDrive (and many other services), often faster than scp or rsync. Load the CRCD module (run module spider rclone to see available versions):

module load rclone

Configuring rclone for OneDrive

Configuring OneDrive is hard on a headless machine because it needs a browser for authentication, so do it from an HTC Desktop session on Open OnDemand: log on to ondemand.htc.crc.pitt.edu, launch Interactive Apps → HTC Desktop (1 core, 1 hour), then open a terminal emulator and run:

module load rclone
rclone config

This creates ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf. Answer the prompts:

  1. New remote → n
  2. Name → something short, e.g. odrive
  3. Storage → type onedrive (or the number shown for Microsoft OneDrive; the number changes between rclone versions, so the name is safer)
  4. client_id / client_secret → leave blank (press Enter)
  5. region → 1 (Microsoft Cloud Global); leave tenant blank
  6. Advanced config? → n
  7. Use auto config? → y (a browser opens for Pitt Passport authentication)
  8. Connection type → 1 (OneDrive Personal or Business)
  9. Select the listed drive (0), confirm, then quit with q
Example rclone config session 
[fangping@htc-n1 ~]$ rclone config
e/n/d/r/c/s/q> n
name> odrive
Storage> onedrive         # the name (or the number shown for Microsoft OneDrive)
client_id>                # (blank)
client_secret>            # (blank)
region> 1                 # Microsoft Cloud Global
tenant>                   # (blank)
Edit advanced config? y/n> n
Use auto config? y/n> y
# ... browser opens; log in with Pitt Passport and authorize rclone ...
Your choice> 1            # OneDrive Personal or Business
Chose drive to use:> 0
Is that okay? y/n> y
y/e/d> y
e/n/d/r/c/s/q> q

Rclone usage

The name odrive below is whatever you chose during configuration. The trailing colon tells rclone it's a remote, not a local path.

rclone lsd odrive:                          # list top-level folders
rclone ls odrive:                           # list all files
rclone mkdir odrive:backup                  # create a folder
rclone copy <local file> odrive:backup      # copy a file up
rclone copy <local folder> odrive:backup/newfolder   # copy a folder up
rclone sync <local folder> odrive:backup    # full sync (overwrites/deletes at destination!)

Warning

rclone sync makes the destination match the source — files already in odrive:backup may be overwritten or deleted. Double-check the destination before syncing.

A few useful options: --transfers=N (parallel transfers, default 4), --onedrive-chunk-size=SIZE (upload chunk size; must be a multiple of 320 KiB), and --skip-links (ignore symlinks). OneDrive sends deletions to its recycle bin by default; add --onedrive-hard-delete to remove them permanently. Full list in the rclone OneDrive docs.

Automating transfers with a batch job

Scripting rclone lets you schedule periodic backups. Submit a job like:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=rclone_to_odrive
#SBATCH --cluster=htc
#SBATCH --partition=htc
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=1
#SBATCH --time=1-00:00:00
#SBATCH --output=rclone_to_odrive.out

module purge
module load rclone

rclone copy --skip-links <local folder> odrive:<remote folder>

Accessing a OneDrive shared folder

rclone has limited support for files shared with you on OneDrive (rclone issue #4062). For shared folders, use the OneDrive Client for Linux, available as a module:

module load onedrive

Check your client version

Shared-folder handling was rewritten in OneDrive Client for Linux v2.5.0 and is not compatible with the older v2.4.x commands (--synchronize, --list-shared-folders, and the business_shared_folders file are gone). Run onedrive --version to confirm you're on v2.5.0 or newer; the steps below use the current workflow.

  1. In the OneDrive web interface, open Shared, select the folder you want, and click Add shortcut to My files.

  2. Enable shared-item sync by adding this line to ~/.config/onedrive/config:

    sync_business_shared_items = "true"

  3. List what's shared with you, then sync. The first run after enabling the option requires a --resync:

    onedrive --list-shared-items
onedrive --sync --download-only --single-directory '<folder>' --verbose

Shared-item sync can break with Microsoft API changes

Microsoft deprecated the Graph sharedWithMe API in 2026, which temporarily broke shared-item enumeration in the client (fixed around v2.5.11). If --list-shared-items returns nothing, confirm the CRCD onedrive module is recent enough, or download the files from the OneDrive web interface instead.

Sharing files from OneDrive

You can share OneDrive files and folders with anyone and control whether they can edit, comment, or view — see Microsoft's sharing guide. OneDrive's own program policies apply to shared content.