NAME¶
unionfs-fuse - A userspace unionfs implementation
SYNOPSIS¶
unionfs [-o option1 -o option2 ... -o
optionN ]
top_branch:lower_branch:...:lowest_branch
mount_point
DESCRIPTION¶
unionfs overlays several directory into one single mount point.
It first tries to access the file on the top branch and if the
file does not exist there, it continues on lower level branches. If the user
tries to modify a file on a lower level read-only branch the file is copied
to to a higher level read-write branch if the copy-on-write (cow)
mode was enabled.
OPTIONS¶
Below is a summary of unionfs options
- -o chroot=path
- Path to chroot into. By using this option unionfs may be used for live CDs
or live USB sticks, etc. So it can serve "/" as filesystem. If
you do not specify this option and try to use it for "/" it will
deadlock on calling 'pivot_root'. If you do set this option, you also need
to specify the branches relativly to the given chroot directory. See
examples/S01a-unionfs-live-cd.sh for an example.
- -o cow
- Enable copy-on-write
- -o hide_meta_files
- In our unionfs root path we have a .unionfs directory that includes
metadata, such as hidden (deleted) files. This options make this directory
invisible from readdir(), so for example "ls -la /union_root/"
will not show it. However, this directory is still there and "cd
.unionfs" or "ls -l .unionfs" still work. Also, libfuse
will create .fuse_hidden* files, if a file is open, but will be deleted.
Those fuse meta files also will be invisble. This option is especially
usufull for package builders.
- -d
- Enable debugging for unionfs and libfuse. Useful for developers if the
code if the code does not behave as expected. Debug information will be
written to stderr and a debug file (./unionfs_debug.log by default).
- -o debug_file=file
- Write unionfs debug information into that file.
- -o max_files=number
- Maximum number of open files. Most system have a default of 1024 open
files per process. For example if unionfs serves "/"
applications like KDE or GNOME might have much more open files, which will
make the unionfs process to exceed this limit. Suggested for "/"
is >16000 or even >32000 files. If this limit exceeds unionfs will
not be able to open further files.
- -o noinitgroups
- Since version 0.23 without any effect, just left over for compatibility.
Might be removed in future versions.
- -o relaxed_permissions
- Usually we automatically add the libfuse option
"-odefault_permissions" so that libfuse takes over permission
checks. However, if running not as root (so as uid =! 0 and gid != 0),
permissions of the underlying filesystem are already sufficient. In order
to prevent from severe security issues, this option is not allowed if
running as root.
- -o statfs_omit_ro
- By default blocks of all branches are counted in statfs() calls (e.g. by
'df'). On setting this option read-only branches will be omitted for the
summary of blocks. This may sound weird but it actually fixes
"wrong" percentage of free space.
Options to libfuse¶
There are several further options available, which don't directly apply to
unionfs, but to libfuse. Please run "unionfs --help" to see these.
We already set the "-o default-permissions" options on our own.
EXAMPLES¶
unionfs -o cow,max_files=32768 \
-o allow_other,use_ino,suid,dev,nonempty \
/u/host/etc=RW:/u/group/etc=RO:/u/common/etc=RO \
/u/union/etc
Like other filesystems unionfs also needs to store meta data. Well, presently
only information about deleted files and directories need to be stored, but in
future releases more information might be required, e.g. inode-numbers for
persistent inode information. Meta data information are saved and looked for
in the .unionfs/ directories of each branch-root. So in the example above,
these are /u/host/etc/.unionfs, /u/group/etc/.unionfs and
/u/common/etc/.unionfs. Within these directories a complete directory
structure may be found. Example: If the admin decides to delete the file
/etc/test/testfile, which only exists in /u/unionfs/etc/test/testfile, unionfs
can't delete this file, since it is on a read-only branch. So instead the
whiteout file /u/host/etc/.unionfs/test/testfile_HIDDEN~ will be created. So
on accessing the union filesystem, test/testfile will not be visible. Please
also note that whiteout files/directories will only hide the files in lower
level branches. So for example whiteouts in the group directory
(/u/group/etc/.unionfs of the example above) will only hide file of the common
branch (/u/common/etc), but not these of the group and host branches.
Especially for diskless-booted environments it is rather useful for the admin
to create whiteout files him/her-self. For example one should blacklist
network re-initializations, /etc/mtab, /etc/nologin of the server and several
cron-scripts. This can be easily achieved by creating whiteout files for these
scripts in the group meta directory.
KNOWN ISSUES¶
1) Another issue is that presently there is no support for read-only branches
when copy-on-write is disabled, thus, -ocow is NOT specified! Support for
that might be added in later releases.
AUTHORS¶
unionfs-fuse Original implementation by Radek Podgorny
<radek@podgorny.cz>
COPYRIGHT¶
Radek Podgorny <radek@podgorny.cz>, Bernd Schubert
<bernd-schubert@gmx.de>
THANKS¶
Many thanks to the author of the FUSE filesystem Miklos Szeredi.