Rucio FUSE-posix interface

This repository carries the best attempt at making the Rucio namespace posix-mountable.

It is based on C code (for the custom FUSE specialization) and on C++11 for utilities and wrappers.

This tool is intended as an alpha version unless explicitly said and has to be considered WIP.

Please note that the first target is to get a read-only file system.

Access pattern

The Rucio file catalog is much flatter than that of a usual POSIX filesystems and as such its representation has to be structured according to that:

• the root of the mount is intended to be a cvmfs-like "/rucio";
• the first level of the tree (namely /rucio/*) should be filled with all the available scopes;
• each scope should appear as a directory filled with its DiDs;
• file DiDs will appear as files;
• container and dataset DiDs will appear as directories;
• datasets and containers might include already represented DiDs: a routine to handle such loops should be present.

Getting Started

Cloning the repository

Fork the repository and clone it on your local machine for development

$ git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/fuse-posix.git
$ cd fuse-posix/
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/rucio/fuse-posix.git

Install the dependencies

Next step is to install the dependencies which shall be required to build the software. To complete the build libcurl-devel, fuse-libs and fuse-devel packages (or equivalent) must be present: cmake will try to locate them for you and trigger some build messages if unable to do so. Please note that cmake version 3 or greater is needed.

Ubuntu/Debian (apt)

$ sudo apt-get install cmake git g++ libfuse-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev

CentOS (yum)

$ yum install -y cmake3 libcurl-devel libfuse-devel

Build the software

To build the software please run:

$ ./build.sh

Setting up the FUSE mount

• STEP 1 - Check FUSE version

$ fusermount -V
fusermount version: 2.9.7

Also check if the fuse group is available on the system and your current user is a part of it or not

$ groups $USER | grep fuse

If this highlights fuse then your current USER is a part of the fuse group and you may skip STEP 2. If not, then add the fuse group as explained in STEP 2.

• STEP 2 - Add fuse group for current USER

$ sudo groupadd fuse
$ sudo usermod -aG fuse $USER

The above step adds a new group named fuse and makes the current user a part of it. If you wish to access the FUSE mount as root, then you must also uncomment (or add if not present) the line user_allow_other in /etc/fuse.conf to enable root access for FUSE filesystem. Once this is done successfully, reload the fuse module with modprobe or restart the machine.

$ modprobe fuse

Setting up Rucio-FUSE connections

Now that fusermount is set up on the machine, we need to set up the Rucio-FUSE connections before proceeding with the mounting process.

The Rucio FUSE module will parse the connection parameters from configuration files in the same format as typical rucio.cfg files. All the .cfg files found in the path pointed by the environment variable RUCIOFS_SETTINGS_FILES_ROOT will be parsed looking for the following required fields in the [client] section:

• rucio_host: the server URL
• username: the server username
• password: the server password
• account: the connection account

At the moment only userpass authentication method is supported. To add a new server it is enough to import the existing .cfg and restart the FUSE module.

NOTE: The configuration files are passed at runtime to the internal routine performing rucio downloads. Do not remove them without restarting the FUSE module!

Mounting with Rucio-FUSE mount

The FUSE mount can be either used as root or the current user.

• OPTION A - Mounting as root

To use FUSE as root, you need to set up fuse module as given in STEP 2, then follow the steps below.

$ sudo mkdir /ruciofs
$ cd fuse-posix/
$ sudo ./cmake-build-debug/bin/rucio-fuse-main

• OPTION B - Mounting as current USER

This step requires root to change the ownership of the mount point from root and group root to $USER and group fuse

$ sudo mkdir /ruciofs
$ sudo chown $USER:fuse /ruciofs
$ ./cmake-build-debug/bin/rucio-fuse-main

Performing the above steps successfully shall parse the settings.json file and mount the server to /ruciofs mount point.

CLI Options

Log levels

The following log levels flags are supported:

• no-opt: log level ERROR
• -v: log level INFO
• -vv: log level DEBUG

Mount point

The -f flag, followed by a valid path, overrides the internally defined ruciofs default mount path.

Config files repository

The -c or --config flag, followed by a valid path, overrides the directory from which the rucio.cfg files are parsed at startup. It will default to ./rucio-settings if not set up via CLI. This is useful for un-the-fly config changes and tests.

Extra Notes

• This has been tested on CentOS7, Mac OS X Mojave 10.14.6, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
• Mac OS X special files created by the OS FS service generate a lot of issues which should be dealt with and prevent the Fuse module from correct mounting under Mac.