Ossfs allows you to mount Alibaba Cloud OSS buckets to local files in Linux systems. In the system, you can quickly use the local file system to perform operations on OSS objects, achieving data sharing.

Notice Note the following limits when using ossfs:
  • If you edit a uploaded file, the file is uploaded again.
  • The performance of metadata-related operations, such as list directory, is poor because these operations need to access the OSS server remotely.
  • An error may occur if you rename an object or a folder. Operation failures may cause inconsistent data.
  • ossfs does not apply to scenarios where read and write operations are highly concurrent.
  • You must maintain data consistency when a OSS bucket is mounted to multiple clients. For example, you must schedule the usage of an object to prevent it from being written by multiple clients at the same time.
  • Hard links are not supported.
Note You can use Cloud Storage Gateway (CSG) to access OSS. In this way, OSS buckets are mapped to local directories or disks.
  • CSG supports the NFS and SMB (CIFS) protocols so that it can allow you to access shared directories based on OSS.
  • CSG also supports the iSCSI protocol. Therefore, it can map massive OSS buckets to local disks and provides efficient elastic storage solution.

Features

Ossfs is constructed based on S3FS and incorporates all S3FS functions, including:

  • Supports most functions of the POSIX file system, including file reading/writing, directories, link operations, permissions, UID/GID, and extended attributes.
  • Uploads large files using the OSS multipart function.
  • Supports MD5 verification which ensures data integrity.

Installation and use

  • Installation package download
    Released Linux Download
    Ubuntu 16.04 (x64) ossfs_1.80.5_ubuntu16.04_amd64.deb
    Ubuntu 14.04 (x64) ossfs_1.80.5_ubuntu14.04_amd64.deb
    CentOS 7.0 (x64) ossfs_1.80.5_centos7.0_x86_64.rpm
    CentOS 6.5 (x64) ossfs_1.80.5_centos6.5_x86_64.rpm

    Due to the lower version of the Linux distribution, the kernel version is relatively lower. The ossfs is prone to disconnection or other problems during the running process. Therefore, users are advised to upgrade the operating system to CentOS 7.0 or Ubuntu 14.04 or later.

  • Installation method
    • Run the following commands to install ossfs for Ubuntu:
      sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
sudo gdebi your_ossfs_package
    • Run the following command to install ossfs for CentOS 6.5 or later:
      sudo yum localinstall your_ossfs_package
    • Run the following command to install ossfs for CentOS 5:
      sudo yum localinstall your_ossfs_package --nogpgcheck
  • Usage
    Set bucket name and AccessKeyId/Secret and save it to the /etc/passwd-ossfs file. Note that the permissions for this file must be set correctly. We suggest setting it to 640. 
    echo my-bucket:my-access-key-id:my-access-key-secret > /etc/passwd-ossfs 
chmod 640 /etc/passwd-ossfs
    Mount the OSS bucket to the specified directory. 
    ossfs my-bucket my-mount-point -ourl=my-oss-endpoint

    Example:

    Mount the bucket my-bucket to the /tmp/ossfs directory. The AccessKeyId is faint, the AccessKeySecret is 123, and the OSS endpoint is http://oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com. 

    echo my-bucket:faint:123 > /etc/passwd-ossfs
chmod 640 /etc/passwd-ossfs
mkdir /tmp/ossfs
ossfs my-bucket /tmp/ossfs -ourl=http://oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com
    Notice If you use an Alibaba Cloud ECS instance to provide ossfs services, you can use the intranet endpoints. In this example, you can replace the OSS endpoint with oss-cn-hangzhou-internal.aliyuncs.com to save bandwidth costs. For more information about intranet endpoints, see Regions and endpoints.

    Unmount the bucket:

    fusermount -u /tmp/ossfs

    For more information, see GitHub ossfs.

Release log

For more information, see GitHub ChangeLog.