Filesystem in Userspace

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Filesystem in Userspace
A flow-chart diagram which shows how FUSE works
Latest release	2.7.3 / February 19, 2008 (2008-02-19); 113 days ago
Written in	C
OS	Unix-like
Genre	File system driver
License	The kernel part GPL and Libfuse under LGPL.
Website	http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is a loadable kernel module for Unix-like computer operating systems, that allows non-privileged users to create their own file systems without editing the kernel code. This is achieved by running the file system code in user space, while the FUSE module only provides a "bridge" to the actual kernel interfaces. FUSE was officially merged into the mainstream Linux kernel tree in kernel version 2.6.14.

FUSE is particularly useful for writing virtual file systems. Unlike traditional filesystems, which essentially save data to and retrieve data from disk, virtual filesystems do not actually store data themselves. They act as a view or translation of an existing filesystem or storage device. In principle, any resource available to FUSE implementation can be exported as a file system. See Examples for some of the possible applications.

Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License, FUSE is free software. The FUSE system was originally part of A Virtual Filesystem (AVFS), but has since split off into its own project on SourceForge.net.

FUSE is available for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD (as PUFFS), OpenSolaris and Mac OS X.

1 Examples
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Examples

HttpFS: Mount a web directory as read-only filesystem - http://httpfs.sourceforge.net/
CurlFtpFS : Mount a ftp directory as a file system - http://curlftpfs.sourceforge.net/
GlusterFS: Clustered Distributed Filesystem having capability to scale up to several petabytes.
SSHFS: Provides access to a remote filesystem through SSH
GmailFS: Filesystem which stores data as mail in Gmail
EncFS: Encrypted virtual filesystem
NTFS-3G and Captive NTFS, allowing access to NTFS filesystems
WikipediaFS : View and edit Wikipedia articles as if they were real files
Sun Microsystems's Lustre cluster filesystem will use fuse to allow it to run in userspace, so that a FreeBSD port is possible. ^[1] However, the ZFS-Linux port of Lustre will be running ZFS's DMU (Data Management Unit) in userspace. ^[2]
ZFS on FUSE: Port of ZFS filesystem to Linux. Currently in beta - http://www.wizy.org/wiki/ZFS_on_FUSE
archivemount
fuse-zip: FUSE filesystem to mount ZIP files - http://code.google.com/p/fuse-zip/
PownceFS: Shows all files uploaded by Pownce buddies under virtual folders that are their usernames. http://rcrowley.org/2008/03/22/powncefs/