I think that the problem with this is that not all filesystem allow random access to just sections of the file, therefore the file (containing the ext2/3 image) would have to be fully read/written on every change - obviously not particularly efficient on bandwidth.
I did some more reading (late) last night and it appears that the Fuse system has some pretty good/easy to use python bindings. If I don't find another solution then perhaps 'attribufs' will make an appearance. Where all file attributes would be stored (in a file or sqlite database) along side the target filesystem. When a file was written to target, the host system's attributes would be written into the attribute database and the file would be placed onto target filesystem. When read, the attributes from target filesystem would be replaced by those in the database before presenting the file to the host system. As the file is maintained as a single file it would still be accessible without the 'attribufs' layer. The database could be cached locally whilst the filesystem is mounted. I would image that this would be useful when reading/writting to any filesystem which obscures/deletes file attributes, such as: vfat, msdos curlftpfs (which presents ftp directory as local filesystem) sshfs (which presents ssh directory as local filesystem) + any other 'remote store' system. Comments, criticisms and code welcome ;-) Simon > Make a Linux image file, format it ext2, store it on the NAS and mount it > locally. > It has been a long time since I have done this but the syntax would look a > bit like this. Change the count size to meet your needs. > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/NAS_SERVER/linux.img bs=4096 count=100000 > mkfs.ext2 /mnt/NAS_SERVER/linux.img > mkdir /mnt/NAS_LINUX > mount -o loop /mnt/NAS_SERVER/linux.img /mnt/NAS_LINUX > > > On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 9:50 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> In a "oh shiny!" moment I pickup a NAS, which is a little limited. >> >> Despite the 'Linux Support' claims, I find the lack of user/group >> permissions the biggest problem. A file will loose this data if/when it >> goes onto NAS. >> >> Does anyone know of a solution to prevent this (other than tar'ing - I'd >> still like random file access)? >> >> I though there might be a Fuse layer to do this, but can't find >> anything. >> >> Cheers, >> Simon. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> clug-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca >> Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) >> **Please remove these lines when replying >> > > > > -- > http://www.Radados.org > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
