--- title: "Oracle Object Storage Mount" description: "Oracle Object Storage mounting tutorial" slug: tutorial_mount url: /oracleobjectstorage/tutorial_mount/ --- # {{< icon "fa fa-cloud" >}} Mount Buckets and Expose via NFS Tutorial This runbook shows how to [mount](/commands/rclone_mount/) *Oracle Object Storage* buckets as local file system in OCI compute Instance using rclone tool. You will also learn how to export the rclone mounts as NFS mount, so that other NFS client can access them. Usage Pattern : NFS Client --> NFS Server --> RClone Mount --> OCI Object Storage ## Step 1 : Install Rclone In oracle linux 8, Rclone can be installed from [OL8_Developer](https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/developer/x86_64/index.html) Yum Repo, Please enable the repo if not enabled already. ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo yum-config-manager --enable ol8_developer [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo yum install -y rclone [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo yum install -y fuse # rclone will prefer fuse3 if available [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo yum install -y fuse3 [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ yum info rclone Last metadata expiration check: 0:01:58 ago on Fri 07 Apr 2023 05:53:43 PM GMT. Installed Packages Name : rclone Version : 1.62.2 Release : 1.0.1.el8 Architecture : x86_64 Size : 67 M Source : rclone-1.62.2-1.0.1.el8.src.rpm Repository : @System From repo : ol8_developer Summary : rsync for cloud storage URL : http://rclone.org/ License : MIT Description : Rclone is a command line program to sync files and directories to and from various cloud services. ``` To run it as a mount helper you should symlink rclone binary to /sbin/mount.rclone and optionally /usr/bin/rclonefs, e.g. ln -s /usr/bin/rclone /sbin/mount.rclone. rclone will detect it and translate command-line arguments appropriately. ```shell ln -s /usr/bin/rclone /sbin/mount.rclone ``` ## Step 2: Setup Rclone Configuration file Let's assume you want to access 3 buckets from the oci compute instance using instance principal provider as means of authenticating with object storage service. - namespace-a, bucket-a, - namespace-b, bucket-b, - namespace-c, bucket-c Rclone configuration file needs to have 3 remote sections, one section of each of above 3 buckets. Create a configuration file in a accessible location that rclone program can read. ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ mkdir -p /etc/rclone [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo touch /etc/rclone/rclone.conf # add below contents to /etc/rclone/rclone.conf [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ cat /etc/rclone/rclone.conf [ossa] type = oracleobjectstorage provider = instance_principal_auth namespace = namespace-a compartment = ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaaa...compartment-a region = us-ashburn-1 [ossb] type = oracleobjectstorage provider = instance_principal_auth namespace = namespace-b compartment = ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaaa...compartment-b region = us-ashburn-1 [ossc] type = oracleobjectstorage provider = instance_principal_auth namespace = namespace-c compartment = ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaaa...compartment-c region = us-ashburn-1 # List remotes [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ rclone --config /etc/rclone/rclone.conf listremotes ossa: ossb: ossc: # Now please ensure you do not see below errors while listing the bucket, # i.e you should fix the settings to see if namespace, compartment, bucket name are all correct. # and you must have a dynamic group policy to allow the instance to use object-family in compartment. [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ rclone --config /etc/rclone/rclone.conf ls ossa: 2023/04/07 19:09:21 Failed to ls: Error returned by ObjectStorage Service. Http Status Code: 404. Error Code: NamespaceNotFound. Opc request id: iad-1:kVVAb0knsVXDvu9aHUGHRs3gSNBOFO2_334B6co82LrPMWo2lM5PuBKNxJOTmZsS. Message: You do not have authorization to perform this request, or the requested resource could not be found. Operation Name: ListBuckets Timestamp: 2023-04-07 19:09:21 +0000 GMT Client Version: Oracle-GoSDK/65.32.0 Request Endpoint: GET https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/n/namespace-a/b?compartmentId=ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaaa...compartment-a Troubleshooting Tips: See https://docs.oracle.com/iaas/Content/API/References/apierrors.htm#apierrors_404__404_namespacenotfound for more information about resolving this error. Also see https://docs.oracle.com/iaas/api/#/en/objectstorage/20160918/Bucket/ListBuckets for details on this operation's requirements. To get more info on the failing request, you can set OCI_GO_SDK_DEBUG env var to info or higher level to log the request/response details. If you are unable to resolve this ObjectStorage issue, please contact Oracle support and provide them this full error message. [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ ``` ## Step 3: Setup Dynamic Group and Add IAM Policy. Just like a human user has an identity identified by its USER-PRINCIPAL, every OCI compute instance is also a robotic user identified by its INSTANCE-PRINCIPAL. The instance principal key is automatically fetched by rclone/with-oci-sdk from instance-metadata to make calls to object storage. Similar to [user-group](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Identity/Tasks/managinggroups.htm), [instance groups](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Identity/Tasks/managingdynamicgroups.htm) is known as dynamic-group in IAM. Create a dynamic group say rclone-dynamic-group that the oci compute instance becomes a member of the below group says all instances belonging to compartment a...c is member of this dynamic-group. ```shell any {instance.compartment.id = '', instance.compartment.id = '', instance.compartment.id = '' } ``` Now that you have a dynamic group, you need to add a policy allowing what permissions this dynamic-group has. In our case, we want this dynamic-group to access object-storage. So create a policy now. ```shell allow dynamic-group rclone-dynamic-group to manage object-family in compartment compartment-a allow dynamic-group rclone-dynamic-group to manage object-family in compartment compartment-b allow dynamic-group rclone-dynamic-group to manage object-family in compartment compartment-c ``` After you add the policy, now ensure the rclone can list files in your bucket, if not please troubleshoot any mistakes you did so far. Please note, identity can take upto a minute to ensure policy gets reflected. ## Step 4: Setup Mount Folders Let's assume you have to mount 3 buckets, bucket-a, bucket-b, bucket-c at path /opt/mnt/bucket-a, /opt/mnt/bucket-b, /opt/mnt/bucket-c respectively. Create the mount folder and set its ownership to desired user, group. ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo mkdir /opt/mnt [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo chown -R opc:adm /opt/mnt ``` Set chmod permissions to user, group, others as desired for each mount path ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo chmod 764 /opt/mnt [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ ls -al /opt/mnt/ total 0 drwxrw-r--. 2 opc adm 6 Apr 7 18:01 . drwxr-xr-x. 10 root root 179 Apr 7 18:01 .. [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ mkdir -p /opt/mnt/bucket-a [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ mkdir -p /opt/mnt/bucket-b [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ mkdir -p /opt/mnt/bucket-c [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ ls -al /opt/mnt total 0 drwxrw-r--. 5 opc adm 54 Apr 7 18:17 . drwxr-xr-x. 10 root root 179 Apr 7 18:01 .. drwxrwxr-x. 2 opc opc 6 Apr 7 18:17 bucket-a drwxrwxr-x. 2 opc opc 6 Apr 7 18:17 bucket-b drwxrwxr-x. 2 opc opc 6 Apr 7 18:17 bucket-c ``` ## Step 5: Identify Rclone mount CLI configuration settings to use. Please read through this [rclone mount](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/) page completely to really understand the mount and its flags, what is rclone [virtual file system](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/#vfs-virtual-file-system) mode settings and how to effectively use them for desired Read/Write consistencies. Local File systems expect things to be 100% reliable, whereas cloud storage systems are a long way from 100% reliable. Object storage can throw several errors like 429, 503, 404 etc. The rclone sync/copy commands cope with this with lots of retries. However rclone mount can't use retries in the same way without making local copies of the uploads. Please Look at the VFS File Caching for solutions to make mount more reliable. First lets understand the rclone mount flags and some global flags for troubleshooting. ```shell rclone mount \ ossa:bucket-a \ # Remote:bucket-name /opt/mnt/bucket-a \ # Local mount folder --config /etc/rclone/rclone.conf \ # Path to rclone config file --allow-non-empty \ # Allow mounting over a non-empty directory --dir-perms 0770 \ # Directory permissions (default 0777) --file-perms 0660 \ # File permissions (default 0666) --allow-other \ # Allow access to other users --umask 0117 \ # sets (660) rw-rw---- as permissions for the mount using the umask --transfers 8 \ # default 4, can be set to adjust the number of parallel uploads of modified files to remote from the cache --tpslimit 50 \ # Limit HTTP transactions per second to this. A transaction is roughly defined as an API call; # its exact meaning will depend on the backend. For HTTP based backends it is an HTTP PUT/GET/POST/etc and its response --cache-dir /tmp/rclone/cache # Directory rclone will use for caching. --dir-cache-time 5m \ # Time to cache directory entries for (default 5m0s) --vfs-cache-mode writes \ # Cache mode off|minimal|writes|full (default off), writes gives the maximum compatibility like a local disk --vfs-cache-max-age 20m \ # Max age of objects in the cache (default 1h0m0s) --vfs-cache-max-size 10G \ # Max total size of objects in the cache (default off) --vfs-cache-poll-interval 1m \ # Interval to poll the cache for stale objects (default 1m0s) --vfs-write-back 5s \ # Time to writeback files after last use when using cache (default 5s). # Note that files are written back to the remote only when they are closed and # if they haven't been accessed for --vfs-write-back seconds. If rclone is quit or # dies with files that haven't been uploaded, these will be uploaded next time rclone is run with the same flags. --vfs-fast-fingerprint # Use fast (less accurate) fingerprints for change detection. --log-level ERROR \ # log level, can be DEBUG, INFO, ERROR --log-file /var/log/rclone/oosa-bucket-a.log # rclone application log ``` ### --vfs-cache-mode writes In this mode files opened for read only are still read directly from the remote, write only and read/write files are buffered to disk first. This mode should support all normal file system operations. If an upload fails it will be retried at exponentially increasing intervals up to 1 minute. VFS cache mode of writes is recommended, so that application can have maximum compatibility of using remote storage as a local disk, when write is finished, file is closed, it is uploaded to backend remote after vfs-write-back duration has elapsed. If rclone is quit or dies with files that haven't been uploaded, these will be uploaded next time rclone is run with the same flags. ### --tpslimit float Limit transactions per second to this number. Default is 0 which is used to mean unlimited transactions per second. A transaction is roughly defined as an API call; its exact meaning will depend on the backend. For HTTP based backends it is an HTTP PUT/GET/POST/etc and its response. For FTP/SFTP it is a round trip transaction over TCP. For example, to limit rclone to 10 transactions per second use --tpslimit 10, or to 1 transaction every 2 seconds use --tpslimit 0.5. Use this when the number of transactions per second from rclone is causing a problem with the cloud storage provider (e.g. getting you banned or rate limited or throttled). This can be very useful for rclone mount to control the behaviour of applications using it. Let's guess and say Object storage allows roughly 100 tps per tenant, so to be on safe side, it will be wise to set this at 50. (tune it to actuals per region) ### --vfs-fast-fingerprint If you use the --vfs-fast-fingerprint flag then rclone will not include the slow operations in the fingerprint. This makes the fingerprinting less accurate but much faster and will improve the opening time of cached files. If you are running a vfs cache over local, s3, object storage or swift backends then using this flag is recommended. Various parts of the VFS use fingerprinting to see if a local file copy has changed relative to a remote file. Fingerprints are made from: - size - modification time - hash where available on an object. ## Step 6: Mounting Options, Use Any one option ### Step 6a: Run as a Service Daemon: Configure FSTAB entry for Rclone mount Add this entry in /etc/fstab : ```shell ossa:bucket-a /opt/mnt/bucket-a rclone rw,umask=0117,nofail,_netdev,args2env,config=/etc/rclone/rclone.conf,uid=1000,gid=4, file_perms=0760,dir_perms=0760,allow_other,vfs_cache_mode=writes,cache_dir=/tmp/rclone/cache 0 0 ``` IMPORTANT: Please note in fstab entry arguments are specified as underscore instead of dash, example: vfs_cache_mode=writes instead of vfs-cache-mode=writes Rclone in the mount helper mode will split -o argument(s) by comma, replace _ by - and prepend -- to get the command-line flags. Options containing commas or spaces can be wrapped in single or double quotes. Any inner quotes inside outer quotes of the same type should be doubled. then run sudo mount -av ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo mount -av / : ignored /boot : already mounted /boot/efi : already mounted /var/oled : already mounted /dev/shm : already mounted none : ignored /opt/mnt/bucket-a : already mounted # This is the bucket mounted information, running mount -av again and again is idempotent. ``` ## Step 6b: Run as a Service Daemon: Configure systemd entry for Rclone mount If you are familiar with configuring systemd unit files, you can also configure the each rclone mount into a systemd units file. various examples in git search: https://github.com/search?l=Shell&q=rclone+unit&type=Code ```shell tee "/etc/systemd/system/rclonebucketa.service" > /dev/null <&1 | grep -i 'Transport endpoint is not connected' | awk '{print ""$2"" }' | tr -d \:) rclone_list=$(findmnt -t fuse.rclone -n 2>&1 | awk '{print ""$1"" }' | tr -d \:) IFS=$'\n'; set -f intersection=$(comm -12 <(printf '%s\n' "$erroneous_list" | sort) <(printf '%s\n' "$rclone_list" | sort)) for directory in $intersection do echo "$directory is being fixed." sudo fusermount -uz "$directory" done sudo mount -av ``` Script to idempotently add a Cron job to babysit the mount paths every 5 minutes ```shell echo "Creating rclone nanny cron job." croncmd="/etc/rclone/scripts/rclone_nanny_script.sh" cronjob="*/5 * * * * $croncmd" # idempotency - adds rclone_nanny cronjob only if absent. ( crontab -l | grep -v -F "$croncmd" || : ; echo "$cronjob" ) | crontab - echo "Finished creating rclone nanny cron job." ``` Ensure the crontab is added, so that above nanny script runs every 5 minutes. ```shell [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ sudo crontab -l */5 * * * * /etc/rclone/scripts/rclone_nanny_script.sh [opc@base-inst-boot ~]$ ``` ## Step 8: Optional: Setup NFS server to access the mount points of rclone Let's say you want to make the rclone mount path /opt/mnt/bucket-a available as a NFS server export so that other clients can access it by using a NFS client. ### Step 8a : Setup NFS server Install NFS Utils ```shell sudo yum install -y nfs-utils ``` Export the desired directory via NFS Server in the same machine where rclone has mounted to, ensure NFS service has desired permissions to read the directory. If it runs as root, then it will have permissions for sure, but if it runs as separate user then ensure that user has necessary desired privileges. ```shell # this gives opc user and adm (administrators group) ownership to the path, so any user belonging to adm group will be able to access the files. [opc@tools ~]$ sudo chown -R opc:adm /opt/mnt/bucket-a/ [opc@tools ~]$ sudo chmod 764 /opt/mnt/bucket-a/ # Not export the mount path of rclone for exposing via nfs server # There are various nfs export options that you should keep per desired usage. # Syntax is # (