Applies to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5

20 Accessing File Systems with FUSE #

FUSE is the acronym for Filesystem in Userspace. This means you can configure and mount a file system as an unprivileged user. Normally, you need to be root for this task. FUSE alone is a kernel module. Combined with plug-ins, it allows you to extend FUSE to access almost all file systems like remote SSH connections, ISO images, and more.

20.1 Configuring FUSE #

Before you can use FUSE, you need to install the package fuse. Depending which file system you want to use, you need additional plug-ins available as separate packages.

Generally you do not need to configure FUSE. However, it is a good idea to create a directory where all your mount points are combined. For example, you can create a directory ~/mounts and insert your subdirectories for your different file systems there.

20.2 Mounting an NTFS Partition #

NTFS, the New Technology File System, is the default file system of Windows. Since under normal circumstances the unprivileged user cannot mount NTFS block devices using the external FUSE library, the process of mounting a Windows partition described below requires root privileges.

For the following procedure, you need the Workstation Extension for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Become root and install the package ntfs-3g.
Create a directory that is to be used as a mount point, for example ~/mounts/windows.
Find out which Windows partition you need. Use YaST and start the partitioner module to see which partition belongs to Windows, but do not modify anything. Alternatively, become root and execute /sbin/fdisk -l. Look for partitions with a partition type of HPFS/NTFS.
Mount the partition in read-write mode. Replace the placeholder DEVICE with your respective Windows partition:
```
ntfs-3g /dev/DEVICE MOUNT POINT
```
To use your Windows partition in read-only mode, append -o ro:
```
ntfs-3g /dev/DEVICE MOUNT POINT -o ro
```
The command ntfs-3g uses the current user (UID) and group (GID) to mount the given device. If you want to set the write permissions to a different user, use the command id USER to get the output of the UID and GID values. Set it with:
```
id tux
uid=1000(tux) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),16(dialout),33(video)
ntfs-3g /dev/DEVICE MOUNT POINT -o uid=1000,gid=100
```
Find additional options in the man page.

To unmount the resource, run fusermount -u MOUNT POINT.

20.3 For More Information #

For more information, see the home page of FUSE at https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse.