lessfs

Intro

lessfs is a deduplicating filesystem. If you store files that have the same content, lessfs saves the data only once. Additionaly lessfs compresses the content and can also encrypt content and metadata.

Installation

Example with Opensuse 11.2:

Add repository and install lessfs:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/filesystems/openSUSE_11.2/ repo-filesystems
zypper refresh
zypper in fuse-lessfs

Configuration

Copy the example config and edit it matching your needs:

cp /usr/share/doc/packages/fuse-lessfs/etc/lessfs.cfg /etc/
vi /etc/lessfs.cfg

With the example config you will get filesystem data in /data/dta and metadata in /data/mta. Use

man lessfs

to learn more about the options.

Create the directories:

mkdir -p /data/dta
mkdir -p /data/mta

Make the filesstem

mklessfs /etc/lessfs.cfg

Mount

lessfs /etc/lessfs.cfg /mnt

Check if you can see the filesystem with df or mount. If something goes wrong you should check the the system log (/var/log/messages).

Unmounting can be done with

umount /mnt

Usage

I use it as backup storage for many systems with rsnapshot - another cool tool!