fuse-backend-rs

Rust FUSE library for server, virtio-fs and vhost-user-fs

Design

The fuse-backend-rs crate is an rust library to implement Fuse daemons based on the Linux FUSE device (/dev/fuse) or the virtiofs draft specification.

Linux FUSE is an userspace filesystem framework, and the /dev/fuse device node is the interface for userspace filesystem daemons to communicate with the in-kernel fuse driver.

And the virito-fs specification extends the FUSE framework into the virtualization world, which uses the Virtio protocol to transfer FUSE requests and responses between the Fuse client and server. With virtio-fs, the Fuse client runs within the guest kernel and the Fuse server runs on the host userspace or hardware.

So the fuse-rs crate is a library to communicate with the Linux FUSE clients, which includes:

• ABI layer, which defines all data structures shared between linux Fuse framework and Fuse daemons.
• API layer, defines the interfaces for Fuse daemons to implement a userspace file system.
• Transport layer, which supports both the Linux Fuse device and virtio-fs protocol.
• VFS/pseudo_fs, an abstraction layer to support multiple file systems by a single virtio-fs device.
• A sample passthrough file system implementation, which passes through files from daemons to clients.

Crate layout

The library is a Cargo workspace. The fuse-backend-rs crate at the root is a thin facade that re-exports the sub-crates under crates/, so every historical fuse_backend_rs::{abi, api, buffer, common, transport, passthrough, overlayfs} path and every historical cargo feature (fusedev, virtiofs, vhost-user-fs, async-io, persist, fuse-t, fusedev-uring) keeps resolving unchanged.

Crate	Contents
fuse-backend-core	The transport-neutral layers: Fuse ABI, API/server, buffers and common utilities.
fuse-backend-vfs	The Vfs union multiplexer and its pseudo-fs backing store, plus the persist snapshot stack.
fuse-backend-fusedev	The /dev/fuse transport, plus FUSE-over-io_uring and the macFUSE/fuse-t transports.
fuse-backend-virtiofs	The virtio-fs transport, carrying Fuse requests over virtio descriptor chains.
fuse-backend-passthrough	The passthrough filesystem driver (Linux-only).
fuse-backend-overlayfs	The overlay filesystem driver stacking read-only layers under a writable one (Linux-only).

Most users should keep depending on the umbrella crate, which bundles each transport with the drivers it has always shipped with:

[dependencies]
fuse-backend-rs = { git = "https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/fuse-backend-rs", features = ["fusedev"] }

Downstream crates that only need one layer can depend on a sub-crate directly and skip the rest of the workspace. For example, a filesystem built on the core ABI/API and the passthrough driver:

[dependencies]
fuse-backend-core = { git = "https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/fuse-backend-rs" }
fuse-backend-passthrough = { git = "https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/fuse-backend-rs" }

The sub-crates are not published to crates.io yet, so depend on the git repository directly for now.

Async IO (Experimental)

Besides the traditional synchronous IO path, an asynchronous IO path is provided through the optional async-io cargo feature, e.g.:

[dependencies]
fuse-backend-rs = { git = "https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/fuse-backend-rs", features = ["fusedev", "async-io"] }

The async-io feature is not part of a released crate version yet, so depend on the git repository directly. Please note that the feature is still experimental:

• It depends on tokio-uring and io_uring, so it's only available on Linux. Builds with the feature enabled will fail on other platforms.
• The asynchronous interfaces and behavior may change in future releases.
• The asynchronous handlers of PassthroughFs currently relay requests to their synchronous counterparts, so the blocking syscalls run in the context of the async runtime. A native io_uring based implementation is planned for the future.

To serve requests asynchronously, mount the filesystem through Vfs and drive a FuseDevTask (fusedev transport) inside an async runtime, refer to tests/async_smoke.rs for a working example.

Examples

Filesystem Drivers

• Virtual File System for an example of union file system.
• Pseudo File System for an example of pseudo file system.
• Passthrough File System for an example of passthrough(stacked) file system.
• Registry Accelerated File System for an example of readonly file system for container images.

Fuse Servers

• Dragonfly Image Service fusedev Server for an example of implementing a fuse server based on the fuse-backend-rs crate.
• Dragonfly Image Service vhost-user-fs Server for an example of implementing vhost-user-fs server based on the fuse-backend-rs crate.

Fuse Server and Main Service Loop

A sample fuse server based on the Linux Fuse device (/dev/fuse):

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License

This project is licensed under

• Apache License, Version 2.0
• BSD-3-Clause License