fuseflect - A FUSE filesystem for local directory mirroring



Contents:

    1. Introduction
    2. Platforms
    3. Setup
	3.1. Compilation
	3.2. Installation
	3.3. Running
    4. Credits
    5. License
    6. Authors


1. Introduction

fuseflect is a FUSE filesystem that allows the user to mirror a local directory
to another, somewhat like using `mount --bind'. Its most important feature is
that it minimises the time during which the source device is kept in a busy
state, as it does not keep open files unless it is actually doing something.



2. Platforms

Currently only the following platforms are supported:

* Linux 2.6.x

fuseflect contains a lot of Linux-specific code, so it will probably fail on any
other platform.



3. Setup

3.1. Compilation

Firstly you need the FUSE library and headers (http://fuse.sourceforge.net).
Afterwards, a simple call to `make' is normally all you will need to compile
fuseflect:

$ make

You can override the CFLAGS variable to provide optimisation flags e.t.c. The
DEBUG variable can be used to enable debugging - if you are using gcc, setting
DEBUG to "-g" would probably do.


3.2. Installation

First verify with `make -n install' the installation paths. By default, the
installation prefix is /usr/local and the fuseflect binary is installed in
$(prefix)/bin. You can set the prefix and bindir variables to override these
defaults. Then run `make install' as root to perform the actual installation:

# make install


3.3. Running

Please read the FUSE documentation before using fuseflect.

Run `fuseflect -h' to see the various command line options. All you have to do
in most cases is:

$ fuseflect source_directory/ mountpoint/

If you want to use fuseflect from /etc/fstab, the following example shows its
use:

fuseflect#/usr/share/doc /fs/vfs/doc fuse defaults 0 0

If you do use fuseflect in your /etc/fstab, you will probably want to add the
allow_other and default_permissions options. The first option allows non-root
users to access fuseflect, while the second one activates the in-kernel
permission checking, since fuseflect does no access control on its own.

WARNING: _NEVER_ USE allow_other WITHOUT default_permissions, OR YOU RISK
ALLOWING UNPRIVILEDGED PROCESSES TO ACCESS FILES THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO.



4. Credits

- Miklos Szeredi <[email protected]> for the fusexmp code and his suggestions
- Anand Avati <[email protected]> for a bit of sample code



5. License

fuseflect is released under the GNU General Public License version 2. The full
text of the license can be found in the COPYING file that should be included in
the fuseflect distribution.



6. Authors

Original author:
	Theodoros V. Kalamatianos <[email protected]>