FUSE mounting on top of a file

Our tool nbdfuse lets you mount an NBD block device as a file, using Linux FUSE. For example you could create a directory with a single file in it (called nbd) which contains the contents of the NBD export:

$ mkdir /var/tmp/test
$ nbdfuse /var/tmp/test --command nbdkit -s memory 1G &
$ ls -l /var/tmp/test/
total 0
 -rw-rw-rw-. 1 rjones rjones 1073741824 Nov  4 13:25 nbd
$ fusermount -u /var/tmp/test

This is cool, but wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of the directory and create the file anywhere? Recently Max Reitz found out you can mount a FUSE filesystem over a regular file.

It works! (After a few adjustments to the nbdfuse code)

$ touch /var/tmp/disk.img
$ nbdfuse /var/tmp/disk.img --command nbdkit -s memory 1G &
$ ls -l /var/tmp/disk.img
 -rw-rw-rw-. 1 rjones rjones 1073741824 Nov  4 13:29 /var/tmp/disk.img
$ fusermount -u /var/tmp/disk.img