xattrfs

The purpose of this project is to emulate extended file attributes (aka xattr) for filesystems which don't support it. Project uses FUSE to create a bind of directory in some different mountpoint. New mountpoint allows to work with xattr regardless of capability of directory file system. Attributes will be stored in SQLite database in file .xattrbd.

Building

sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev libsqlite3-dev
make

Usage

xattrfs source_dir mountpoint [-o FUSE arguments]

See list of FUSE arguments in general mount options section of man mount.fuse. Example:

xattrfs /src /dest -o allow_other

Demo

This demo shows output on attemp to set up xattr on file system without xattr support - aufs. Then mount to another directory with xattrfs and it's possible to set up xattr. Last lines show where xattr actually stored.

 ~ $ cd /tmp
 /tmp $ mkdir aufs-doesnt-support-xattr
 /tmp $ sudo mount -t aufs -o br=/dev/shm/fordemo none /tmp/aufs-doesnt-support-xattr
[sudo] password for nikolay: 
 /tmp $ touch aufs-doesnt-support-xattr/testfile
 /tmp $ setfattr -n "user.demo.xattr" -v "myvalue" aufs-doesnt-support-xattr/testfile 
setfattr: aufs-doesnt-support-xattr/testfile: Operation not supported
 /tmp $ 
 /tmp $ mkdir xattrfs
 /tmp $ ~/xattrfs/xattrfs /tmp/aufs-doesnt-support-xattr /tmp/xattrfs
 /tmp $ setfattr -n "user.demo.xattr" -v "this value will be stored in sqlite" xattrfs/testfile 
 /tmp $ getfattr -d -m- xattrfs/testfile 
# file: xattrfs/testfile
user.demo.xattr="this value will be stored in sqlite"

 /tmp $ sqlite3 /tmp/xattrfs/.xattrdb "SELECT * from '/testfile';"
user.demo.xattr|this value will be stored in sqlite
 /tmp $

License

The MIT License. See LICENSE file.

Authors