Seamless Jellyfin Playback with mergerfs and Rclone

[xd003]

I'm setting up a media workflow involving Jellyfin, rclone, and mergerfs. My media library resides primarily on a Google Drive mount configured as read-only with vfs cache, mounted at /mnt/remote.

When new media is downloaded, it's first stored locally at /mnt/local. Later, it's uploaded to Google Drive using rclone move. The issue is that I can’t watch new downloads immediately with Jellyfin because the files aren’t visible in the remote mount until the upload finishes.

To fix this, I want to create a mergerfs mount at /mnt/mergerfs that combines /mnt/local and /mnt/remote. This way, Jellyfin can always access the most up-to-date media:

• If a file exists locally (i.e., just downloaded), it will be read from /mnt/local.
• Once it's uploaded and moved by rclone, Jellyfin will access it from /mnt/remote.

I'm looking at mergerfs mount options, but they’re quite technical. I would really appreciate a well-optimized mount options that prioritizes performance and efficient read access for this use case.

[trapexit]

https://trapexit.github.io/mergerfs/faq/configuration_and_policies/#what-settings-should-i-use

Just set the policy and branches for what you want.

/mnt/local:/mnt/remote branches with category.create=ff

[xd003]

[Unit]
Description=MergerFS mergerfs /mnt/mergerfs service
After=gdmount.service
Requires=gdmount.service

[Service]
Type=simple
KillMode=none
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mergerfs \
    -f \
    -o cache.files=off \
    -o category.create=ff \
    -o func.getattr=newest \
    -o dropcacheonclose=false \
    -o fsname=mergerfs \
    /mnt/local=RW:/mnt/remote=RO \
    /mnt/mergerfs

ExecStop=/bin/fusermount3 -uz /mnt/mergerfs
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Based on the quickstart guide, I've finalized this setup. Does it look good to go, or would you suggest any changes?

[trapexit]

looks fine