Cloudfuse - An S3 and Azure Storage FUSE driver

Cloudfuse provides the ability to mount a cloud bucket in your local filesystem on Linux and Windows with a GUI for easy configuration. With Cloudfuse you can easily read and write to the cloud, and connect programs on your computer to the cloud even if they're not cloud-aware. Cloudfuse uses file caching to provide the performance of local storage, or you can use streaming mode to efficiently access small parts of large files (e.g. video playback). Cloudfuse is a fork of blobfuse2, and adds S3 support, a GUI, and Windows support. Cloudfuse supports clouds with an S3 or Azure interface.

Table of Contents

• Installation
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • From Archive
  • From Source
• Basic Use
• Health Monitor
• Command Line Interface
• Limitations
• License
• Support
• Contributing

Installation

Cloudfuse includes two types of installers. The default "cloudfuse" and the "cloudfuse_no_gui" option. The "no_gui" option includes only the cloudfuse CLI tool and will not install the GUI and on Windows it will additionally not install the startup tool which automatically restarts existing mounts on reboot. The "no_gui" installer is significantly smaller and suitable for those who only want the CLI tool. Most users should pick the default "cloudfuse" installer.

Windows

Download and run the .exe installer from our latest release here. Uncheck the "Launch Cloudfuse" upon finishing the installation. Run the GUI separately as admin after the install completes.

Linux

Debian /Ubuntu

Download the .deb file from our latest release here and run the following command in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install ./cloudfuse*.deb

CentOS / RHEL

Download the .rpm file from our latest release here and run the following command in your terminal:
sudo rpm -i ./cloudfuse*.rpm

Enable Running With Systemd

To enable Cloudfuse to run using systemd, see Setup for systemd instructions

From Archive

Download the archive for your platform and architecture from the latest release here. The archive includes the GUI.
On Windows, you will need to install WinFsp to use Cloudfuse. See this to install WinFSP.

From Source

Please refer to the Installation from source to manually install Cloudfuse.

Basic Use

The quickest way to get started with Cloudfuse is to use the GUI. Open Cloudfuse from the desktop shortcut to launch it.
If you installed Cloudfuse from an archive, run cloudfuseGUI from the extracted archive. To run the GUI from source, see instructions here.

• Choose mount settings:

  • Select the desired type of cloud (Azure or S3).
  • Click config to open the settings window.
  • Enter the credentials for your cloud storage container.
    (see here for S3, or here for Azure credential requirements).
  • Select file caching or streaming mode (see File-Cache and Streaming for details).
  • Close the settings window and save your changes.

  The config file is written to this location on Windows: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming, and on Linux: /opt/cloudfuse/.
  You can view and edit the config file directly (see guide).

• Mount your container:

  • Click Browse in the main window and browse to the EMPTY folder you want to mount your container in. You may need to create this folder.
  • Click Mount.
  • Watch for status messages below. On success, your files will appear in the mount directory.
    Note: if mount fails with an error mentioning WinFSP, you may need to install WinFSP (see installation instructions).

  On Windows, mounted containers will persist across system restarts.

• Unmount:

  • Make sure the mount directory you want to unmount is listed. If it isn't, click browse and select it.
  • Click the unmount mutton.
  • Watch for a status message below. On success, the mount directory will become empty.
    Note: If you enabled the Persist File Cache option, the local file cache for the container will be kept and reused when the container is mounted again.

You can also use the command line interface to mount and unmount.

Health Monitor

Cloudfuse also supports a health monitor.
The health monitor allows customers gain more insight into how their Cloudfuse instance is behaving with the rest of their machine.
Visit here to set it up.

Command Line Interface

The general format of the Cloudfuse Linux commands is:
cloudfuse [command] [arguments] --[flag-name]=[flag-value]

Available commands:

• help [command] - Displays general help, or help for the specified command
• mount - Mounts a cloud storage container as a filesystem
  Example: cloudfuse mount <mount path> --config-file=<config file>
  Supported container types:
  • S3 Bucket Storage
  • Azure Blob Storage
  • Azure Datalake Storage Gen2
• mount all - Mounts all the containers in an S3 Account or Azure account supported by mount
  Example: cloudfuse mount all <mount path> --config-file=<config file>
  On Windows, mounted containers will be remounted on login after a restart.
• mount list - Lists all Cloudfuse filesystems
  Example: cloudfuse mount list
• unmount - Unmounts the Cloudfuse filesystem
  Add --lazy (or -z) flag to use lazy unmount (prevents busy errors).
  Example: cloudfuse unmount --lazy <mount path>
  On Windows, unmounting a container also stops it from being automatically remounted at login.
• unmount all - Unmounts all Cloudfuse filesystems
  Add --lazy (or -z) flag to use lazy unmount (prevents busy errors) - Linux only.
  Example: cloudfuse unmount all --lazy

Remount on Startup (Windows Only)

• cloudfuse service install - Installs the startup process for Cloudfuse which remounts containers on login after a restart.
• cloudfuse service uninstall - Uninstalls the startup process for Cloudfuse and prevents containers from being remounted on login.

Secure Options

To use security options the general format for cloudfuse commands is:
cloudfuse [command] [arguments] --[flag-name]=[flag-value]

• secure decrypt - Decrypts a config file
• secure encrypt - Encrypts a config file
• secure get - Gets value of a config parameter from an encrypted config file
• secure set - Updates value of a config parameter

Find help from your command prompt

To see a list of commands, type cloudfuse -h. To learn about a specific command, just include the name of the command (For example: cloudfuse mount -h).

Limitations

NOTICE

• We have seen some customer issues around files getting corrupted when streaming is used in write mode. Kindly avoid using this feature for write while we investigate and resolve it.

Un-Supported File system operations

• mkfifo : fifo creation is not supported by cloudfuse and this will result in "function not implemented" error
• chown : Change of ownership is not supported by Azure Storage hence Cloudfuse does not support this.
• Creation of device files or pipes is not supported by Cloudfuse.
• Cloudfuse does not support extended-attributes (x-attrs) operations
• Cloudfuse does not support lseek() operation on directory handles. No error is thrown but it will not work as expected.

Un-Supported Scenarios

• Cloudfuse does not support overlapping mount paths. While running multiple instances of Cloudfuse make sure each instance has a unique and non-overlapping mount point.

• Cloudfuse does not support co-existence with NFS on same mount path. Behavior in this case is undefined.

• For Azure block blob accounts, where data is uploaded through other means, Cloudfuse expects special directory marker files to exist in container. In absence of this few file operations might not work. For e.g. if you have a blob 'A/B/c.txt' then special marker files shall exists for 'A' and 'A/B', otherwise opening of 'A/B/c.txt' will fail. Once a 'ls' operation is done on these directories 'A' and 'A/B' you will be able to open 'A/B/c.txt' as well. Possible workaround to resolve this from your container is to either

  create the directory marker files manually through portal or run 'mkdir' command for 'A' and 'A/B' from cloudfuse. Refer here for details on this.

Other Limitations

• In case of Azure BlockBlob accounts, ACLs are not supported by Azure Storage so Cloudfuse will by default return success for 'chmod' operation. However it will work fine for Gen2 (DataLake) accounts. ACLs are not currently supported for S3 accounts.
• When Cloudfuse is mounted on a docker container, SYS_ADMIN privileges are required for it to interact with the fuse driver. If container is created without the privilege, mount will fail. Sample command to spawn a docker container is
  docker run -it --rm --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN --device=/dev/fuse --security-opt apparmor:unconfined <environment variables> <docker image>

Syslog security warning

By default, Cloudfuse will log to syslog. The default settings will, in some cases, log relevant file paths to syslog. If this is sensitive information, turn off logging or set log-level to LOG_ERR.

License

The Cloudfuse project is licensed under MIT.

Third-Party Notices

See notices for third party license notices.

Qt is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, which is available here.

WinFSP is licensed under the GPLv3 license with a special exception for Free/Libre and Open Source Software, which is available here.

Attribution

WinFsp - Windows File System Proxy, Copyright (C) Bill Zissimopoulos - link

Support

Contact Us

We welcome your questions and feedback!
Email us: [email protected].

Frequently Asked Questions

A list of FAQs can be found here.

Report Issues and Request Features

Please submit issues and requests here.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions.

This project is governed by the code of conduct.
You are expected to follow this as you contribute to the project.
Please report all unacceptable behavior to [email protected]