[Tfug] [tfug] Announcing runfs

[Ryan Cresawn]

I imagine runfs would be useful as a temporary storage location for
encryption software. If you use miniLock, GPG, or PGP you know that those
programs all need a place to store a plaintext file after it is decrypted.
Let's say you have a text file you store passwords in. You decrypt the file
to your home directory, make a change to its contents, and encrypt the
file. Did you remember to remove the plaintext version from your
filesystem? Jude, do you think this would be a reasonable use runfs or am I
way off?

On Tue Oct 28 2014 at 12:01:26 PM Jude Nelson <judecn at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, it's a FUSE filesystem, so you just run it as follows:
>
> $ runfs /path/to/mountpoint
>
> Once mounted, it looks like and behaves like tmpfs, but if a process
> creates a file in it and dies, the file gets removed automatically.
>
> It's meant for holding things like PID files, lock files, UNIX domain
> sockets and named pipes, which aren't supposed to live longer than the
> process that created them anyway.  You could use it along side (or in place
> of) tmpfs on /run.  I've been getting a lot of mileage out of it for
> testing other programs that create temporary files like these but crash
> before they can clean up.
>
> I can make some debs and rpms for runfs and fskit, if anyone's interested
> :)
>
> -Jude
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Keith Smith <techlists at phpcoderusa.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Not sure how I would use something like this as a LAMP developer.
>>
>> Your gizmo seems really cool.  How would one use it?
>>
>>
>> On 2014-10-27 21:36, Jude Nelson wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks!  I just wrote up a short blurb and example on it here, if
>>> you're
>>> interested: http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/10/runfs-
>>> self-cleaning-ram-filesystem.html
>>> [4]
>>>
>>> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Keith Smith
>>> <techlists at phpcoderusa.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Cool & Congrats!!
>>>>
>>>> On 2014-10-27 15:22, Jude Nelson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Hey everyone,
>>>>>
>>>>> In case anyone's interested, I've created an in-RAM filesystem
>>>>> called
>>>>> runfs for storing temporary files (similar to what /run is used
>>>>> for).  The key difference is that once the process that creates
>>>>> the
>>>>> files dies, runfs automatically removes them.  You don't have to
>>>>> worry about old PID files and sockets getting left around.
>>>>>
>>>>> The source code is here:  https://github.com/jcnelson/runfs [1]
>>>>> [1]
>>>>>
>>>>> It's built with a filesystem SDK I also wrote, called fskit.
>>>>> It's
>>>>> code is here:  https://github.com/jcnelson/fskit [2] [2]
>>>>>
>>>>> Building and installing is super-simple:  just make and make
>>>>> install.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any/all feedback welcome :)
>>>>>
>>>>> -Jude
>>>>>
>>>>> PS  This is the first of a few filesystems I intend to create.
>>>>> Another one I'm working on will replace udev, and unlike udev, it
>>>>> will
>>>>> filter inodes based on the process that's asking and change their
>>>>> permissions.  This will let e.g. the X server access /dev/dri
>>>>> and
>>>>> /dev/event/* without root or setuid, and will block all other
>>>>> programs
>>>>> from accessing them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Links:
>>>>> ------
>>>>> [1] https://github.com/jcnelson/runfs [1]
>>>>> [2] https://github.com/jcnelson/fskit [2]
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>>>>> Subscription Options:
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Keith Smith
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>>>> Subscription Options:
>>>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org [3]
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Links:
>>> ------
>>> [1] https://github.com/jcnelson/runfs
>>> [2] https://github.com/jcnelson/fskit
>>> [3] http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>> [4]
>>> http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/10/runfs-self-cleaning-
>>> ram-filesystem.html
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>>> Subscription Options:
>>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Keith Smith
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
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>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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