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I'm having trouble figuring out how to partition and mount my drive using UnionFs as my filesystem. I think I'm missing something basic but can't make sense of it. I see some posts stating they are installing Unionfs so I may be thinking about this all wrong. May just need an explanation I understand.

Raffa
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DCcrypto
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  • OnionFS is not a default filesystem in Ubuntu, nor does it have support bundled within Ubuntu or the repositories. Do you have a reference to "OnionFs" specifically, namingly how to install OnionFS support into your system? (If your system doesn't support OnionFS, you can't format your drive with it) – Thomas Ward Aug 13 '21 at 18:25
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    Do you mean "UnionFS"? If so, then you probably need to install sudo apt install union-fuse – Terrance Aug 13 '21 at 18:31
  • Im sorry I think I do mean unionFS my buddy told me it was called onionfs which may be why I was having such a hard time finding out how to use it. I will try the above and see how it works out. Again sorry. semi new to linux but that was a rookie mistake there. Thanks for the info. So the next part of my question would be is UnionFS a file system on the Hard drives or does it take each Hard drive with the file systems on it and make it one over the top of them. – DCcrypto Aug 13 '21 at 18:45
  • If you are new to using Linux, why would you choose to use this file system? It seems that you are setting yourself up for failure as a new user. If you are trying to learn how to use Ubuntu, don't try to reinvent the wheel. – Nmath Aug 13 '21 at 18:52
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    Does this answer your question? How do I get unionfs installed? – Raffa Aug 13 '21 at 18:56
  • The reason Im looking into this filesystem is I currently have 60 , 14TB hds setup using unraid for chia farming, my friend told me using unionfs file system with ubuntu would be a better solution for the long run as I have 3 more 45 bay JBOD's to fill with drives little by little. Not trying to reinvent the wheel just trying to plan for the future growth of this chia farm. I'm new to ubuntu but not afraid to get my hands dirty. Have a test server up with this in the middle of my living room taking notes and googling. Came here for a little more help to add in. – DCcrypto Aug 13 '21 at 18:58
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    This is not a real file system like the kinds used to format partitions on hard disks… It is a utility to merge multiple directories under one mount point … It can be installed from repositories like any other package. – Raffa Aug 13 '21 at 19:01
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    I wouldn't advise trying to use unionfs here, instead I"d look to set up LVM and use the drives as physical volumes to run the LVM, which will span the various disks instead as a logical volume (sort of a fake RAID0). Provided you don't intend to backup each drive or have redundancy, the LVM solution may work better. – Thomas Ward Aug 13 '21 at 19:07
  • Information here: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man8/unionfs.8.html and here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS – Raffa Aug 13 '21 at 19:10
  • Please see this answer on aufs an implementation of UnionFS. – Raffa Aug 13 '21 at 19:23

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unionfs-fuse is not a real file system like the kinds used to format partitions on hard disks… It is a virtual file system ... i.e. a utility to merge multiple mount points / directories under one mount point / directory … It can be installed from repositories like any other package. Therefore, it is not something to sort out during the installation of Ubuntu ... you should install Ubuntu as usual and once the system is up and running comes the part of installing support for UnionFS and merging directories / mount points with it.

However, unionfs-fuse is not the only or most robust tool of its kind ... aufs is a recommended newer implementation of UnionFS and is fairly simple to install and use.

You can install aufs support like so:

sudo apt install aufs-tools

You can use it like so:

sudo mount -t aufs -o br=/FirstDirectory=rw:/SecondDrectory=rw:/ThirdDirectory=rw none /UnifiedMountPoint/

Where /FirstDirectory, /SecondDrectory and /ThirdDirectory ... etc. are multiple directories / mount points (AKA branches) that needed to be unified under one directory / mount point ... they are separated by a colon : and =rw right after the directories paths is an option to set read and write permissions for those directories.

And where /UnifiedMountPoint/ is the directory / mount point under which all the branch directories are unified and accessed. This Directory /mount point must exist / be created beforehand.

Raffa
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