Can’t self-update rclone? Please shed light on the TrueNAS file system architecture

TrueNAS General
1

The rclone command has a self-update mechanism. And yet,

root@qnaptruenas[/usr/bin]# rclone selfupdate 
2026/05/05 22:40:05 CRITICAL: Error: /usr/bin/rclone: file is not writable, run self-update as root

I already ran that command as root! Okay, so maybe rclone does not have write-privileges for the root user… Let’s see:

root@qnaptruenas[/home/truenas_admin]# cd /usr/bin
root@qnaptruenas[/usr/bin]# ls -la | grep rclone 
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root    87830480 Apr 13 15:26 rclone

So I tried this command:

root@qnaptruenas[/usr/bin]# chgrp wheel rclone
chgrp: changing group of 'rclone': Read-only file system

Read-only file system? Is this similar to macOS’s Sealed System Volume?

2

You would get updates to rclone in the next version of TrueNAS, if they updated it. It usually happens around major releases.
From 26.0.0-BETA.1

Welcome to TrueNAS
truenas_admin@truenas[~]$ rclone --version
rclone v1.72.1
- os/version: debian 13.0 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.18.13-production+truenas (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.24.4
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none
truenas_admin@truenas[~]$   
```
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3

Consider the TrueNAS system “firmware”. The only way to update any part of it is via a TrueNAS update.

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