sql-fs

POSIX-style filesystem on top of a SQL database using FUSE. At the moment, this filesystem only supports CockroachDB. This is a proof of concept and has limitations. See Future Work below.

Details

This project uses bazil.org/fuse, which is a Go library for writing FUSE userspace filesystems. Bazil implements the kernel-userspace communication protocol.

sql-fs will communicate with the kernel through Bazil to register the mount/ mountpoint as a filesystem. The kernel will forward all filesystem operations for that filesystem back to the sql-fs process through the communication channel established.

Dependencies

1. CockroachDB
2. FUSE kernel driver and libraries:
   • Mac: OSXFUSE
   • Linux: fuse package
3. Go.

Usage

Assuming that CockroachDB is listening on port 26257, here are the steps to run sql-fs:

# Clone the sql-fs git repository
git clone git@github.com:imjching/sql-fs.git
cd sql-fs

# Run schema.sql
cockroach sql --insecure < schema.sql

# Build the binary and start the filesystem
make run

# Your mountpoint will be ./mount

Future Work

1. Support for multiple databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) with abstraction.
2. Concurrent file access. The current implementation for writing and reading is a little fragile.
3. Tests.

References

• To FUSE or Not to FUSE: Performance of User-Space File Systems: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast17/fast17-vangoor.pdf