Failure to mount with user_allow_other disabeld in fuse.conf about mergerfs HOT 6 CLOSED

What is the usecase?

mergerfs must run as root to work properly. allow_other is required for it to be visible by any other user. If run as root the /etc/fuse.conf setting is not relevant. So I can optionally set allow_other but I would then just need to add a test to see if running as root and error out or log serious warnings that it probably won't work.

from mergerfs.

The primary use case I've observed is people on shared hosting plans using it to merge slow & cheap cloud storage (often Google Drive) together with local storage for Plex servers.

It's a way to merge short term and long term storage together for them.

They don't have root, so mergerfs is used with user permissions only. I'm aware of nearly a hundred people running mergerfs for this precise use case, and (so far) the lack of root level permissions hasn't been a problem for any of them.

from mergerfs.

mergerfs absolutely is written (and could ever only work properly) when run as root. It simply has ignored certain errors that allowed it to continue on when certain things failed. Some actions are impossible to do without root access. Those users just haven't done anything with perms to have noticed it.

I can rework it not to add if not root but I've already started putting in strong warnings about this situation because I've gotten plenty of people who tried running mergerfs as non-root and ran into issues and reported them as bugs.

from mergerfs.

Fair enough. Closing this as an unsupported use case.

Thanks for your work on this project!

from mergerfs.

As I said I can rework it to accommodate but it will spit out a warning to indicate it isn't technically supported.

from mergerfs.

I would certainly ensure it continues to get used if you're willing to support it with a warning.

from mergerfs.