Connecting clients

What you’ll see

The root of every BlixtFS mount has one directory per cloud provider, and each bucket appears inside its provider’s directory:

/mnt/blixt/
├── aws/
│   └── my-bucket/
├── gcp/
│   └── training-data/
└── cloudflare/
    └── media-archive/

NFS

NFSv4 is available in every edition, and is the recommended protocol for Linux and MacOS servers and workstations.

# Linux
sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=4 blixt.example.com:/ /mnt/blixt

# MacOS
sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=4,noresvport blixt.example.com:/ /mnt/blixt

NFSv3 is available with an Enterprise or High Performance license:

sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=3 blixt.example.com:/ /mnt/blixt

When files change outside BlixtFS

NFS clients cache attributes and directory lookups for a few seconds, and they remember names that didn’t exist. That is fine when every change goes through BlixtFS. When other programs write to the bucket directly and an NFS client must see their changes promptly, reduce the caching:

# Linux
sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=4,actimeo=1,lookupcache=none blixt.example.com:/ /mnt/blixt

# MacOS (has no lookupcache option)
sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=4,noresvport,actimeo=1 blixt.example.com:/ /mnt/blixt

Less caching means more requests to BlixtFS, so use these options only where you need them.

SMB

SMB is available in every edition. The share is named bfs. Create the SMB user and password on the server (see Protocols).

# Linux
sudo mount -t cifs //blixt.example.com/bfs /mnt/blixt -o vers=3.1.1,username=alice

# MacOS: Finder › Go › Connect to Server
smb://blixt.example.com/bfs

:: Windows
net use Z: \\blixt.example.com\bfs /user:alice

SFTP

SFTP is available with an Enterprise or High Performance license. It listens on port 2222 and accepts SSH public keys for the bfs user.

sftp -P 2222 bfs@blixt.example.com

Add authorised public keys on the server. See Protocols.

Choosing a protocol