DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / archivemount / archivemount.1.en
ARCHIVEMOUNT(1) User Commands ARCHIVEMOUNT(1)

archivemount - mounts an archive for access as a file system

archivemount [-hVdfs] [-o options] archivepath mountpoint

The archivemount command mounts the file tree contained in the archive archivepath on the directory mountpoint. The archive's contents can subsequently be accessed inside mountpoint as a file system. The umount(8) command performs the corresponding unmount operation.

archivemount is known to work under both linux and Mac OS X (via MacFUSE).

Consider the gzipped tar archive ``files.tgz'' containing files ``file1'' and ``file2'', and an empty directory ``mnt''.

$ ls
files.tgz    mnt/
$ archivemount files.tgz mnt


$ ls mnt
file1    file2
[... Perform desired read/write operations on the archive via mnt/ ...]


$ umount mnt
[... Any changes are saved to the archive ...]

Archive format support is provided by the libarchive(3) library. Read operations are supported for:

  • old-style tar archives,
  • most variants of the POSIX ``ustar'' format,
  • the POSIX ``pax interchange'' format,
  • GNU-format tar archives,
  • most common cpio archive formats,
  • ISO9660 CD images (with or without RockRidge extensions),
  • Zip archives.

Archives compressed with gzip(1), bzip2(1), or compress(1) are automatically detected and transparently decompressed.

The following formats can be written:

  • POSIX-standard ``ustar'' archives,
  • POSIX ``pax interchange format'' archives,
  • POSIX octet-oriented cpio archives,
  • two different variants of shar archives.

Before writing, the original archive is renamed with a ``.orig'' extension appended to it. More detail about the read/write support can be found in the libarchive(3) documentation.

archivemount is built upon the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) library, and the complete set of available options depends upon the specific FUSE implementation. Execute archivemount -h to retrieve a definitive list.

mount options
print help
print version

disable write support
remove archive file backups
mount only subtree of archive, strip subtree part from path

These options are available to linux users using standard FUSE.

enable debug output (implies -f)
foreground operation
disable multi-threaded operation
allow access to other users
allow access to root
allow mounts over non-empty file/dir

-o default_permissions enable permission checking by kernel

set filesystem name
set filesystem type
issue large read requests (2.4 only)
set maximum size of read requests
immediate removal (don't hide files)
let filesystem set inode numbers
try to fill in d_ino in readdir
use direct I/O
cache files in kernel
enable caching based on modification times
set file permissions (octal)
set file owner
set file group
cache timeout for names (1.0s)
cache timeout for deleted names (0.0s)
cache timeout for attributes (1.0s)
auto cache timeout for attributes (attr_timeout)
allow requests to be interrupted
signal to send on interrupt (10)
names of modules to push onto filesystem stack
set maximum size of write requests
set maximum readahead
perform reads asynchronously (default)
perform reads synchronously
enable atomic open+truncate support

These options are available to Mac users using MacFUSE.

allow access to others besides the user who mounted the file system
allow a mount point that itself resides on a MacFUSE volume (by default, such mounting is disallowed)
allow access to root (can't be used with allow_other)
handle extended attributes entirely through ._ files
specify block size in bytes of "storage"
enable case-insensitive mode
timeout in seconds for kernel calls to daemon
turn on debug information printing
let the kernel handle permission checks locally
defer permission checks to file operations themselves
use alternative (direct) path for kernel-user I/O
turn on Mac OS X extended security (ACLs)
set the second 32-bit component of the fsid
set the file system's name
set the file system's fssubtype identifier
set the file system's type name
specify maximum I/O size in bytes
contain symbolic links within the mount
kernel will send a signal (SIGKILL by default) to the daemon after unmount finishes
mark the volume as ``local'' (default is ``nonlocal'')
enable vnode name caching of non-existent objects
set the file system's volume name

disable all graphical alerts (if any) in MacFUSE Core
ignore Apple Double (._) and .DS_Store files entirely
ignore all ``com.apple.*'' extended attributes
mark the volume as non-browsable by the Finder
meta option equivalent to noreadahead,noubc,novncache
do not ping Disk Arbitration (pings by default)
disable I/O read-ahead behavior for this file system
disable sync-on-close behavior (enabled by default)
disable synchronous-writes behavior (dangerous)
disable the unified buffer cache for this file system
disable the vnode name cache for this file system

immediate removal (don't hide files)
let filesystem set inode numbers
try to fill in d_ino in readdir
use direct I/O
cache files in kernel
enable caching based on modification times
set file permissions (octal)
set file owner
set file group
cache timeout for names (1.0s)
cache timeout for deleted names (0.0s)
cache timeout for attributes (1.0s)
auto cache timeout for attributes (attr_timeout)
allow requests to be interrupted
signal to send on interrupt (30)
names of modules to push onto filesystem stack

set maximum size of write requests
set maximum readahead
perform reads asynchronously (default)
perform reads synchronously

[subdir]
prepend this directory to all paths (mandatory)
transform absolute symlinks to relative
[iconv]
original encoding of file names (default: UTF-8)
new encoding of the file names (default: ISO-8859-2)

This sofware is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with this software; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

This is beta software and should be treated as such. Bug reports to the AUTHORS listed below would be appreciated.

archivemount is forced to run a single-thread mode for now. Support for stable multithreading is planned in a future release.

bzip2(1), compress(1), cpio(1), gzip(1), libarchive(3), pax(1), tar(1), umount(8), and zip(1)

``Filesystem in Userspace'': http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

``MacFUSE'': http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

Archivemount is written and maintained by Andre Landwehr <andrel@cybernoia.de>.

This man page was written by Tom Duck <tom.duck@dal.ca> with material drawn from the page for libarchive(3).

15 August 2013 ARCHIVEMOUNT version 0.8.7