GVFS
Encyclopedia
GVFS is the virtual filesystem for the GNOME desktop, which allows users easy access to remote data via SFTP
SSH file transfer protocol
In computing, the SSH File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol that provides file access, file transfer, and file management functionality over any reliable data stream...

, FTP
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

, WebDAV
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...

, SMB
Server Message Block
In computer networking, Server Message Block , also known as Common Internet File System operates as an application-layer network protocol mainly used to provide shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. It also provides an...

, and local data via HAL
HAL (software)
HAL was a software project providing a hardware abstraction layer for Unix-like computer systems.HAL is now deprecated on GNU/Linux systems, with functionality being merged into udev as of 2008–2010...

 integration, OBEX and others.

Attached resources are exposed via a URI
Úri
Úriis a village and commune in the comitatus of Pest in Hungary....

 syntax, for example smb://server01/gamedata or ftp://username:password@ftp.example.net/public_html, but are also mounted
Mount (computing)
Mounting takes place before a computer can use any kind of storage device . The user or their operating system must make it accessible through the computer's file system. A user can access only files on mounted media.- Mount point :A mount point is a physical location in the partition used as a...

 in the traditional manner under ~/.gvfs/ to make them available to older applications using standard POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

 commands and I/O.

Technical detail

GVFS may use FUSE
Filesystem in Userspace
Filesystem in Userspace is a loadable kernel module for Unix-like computer operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code...

, and is a replacement for the earlier GnomeVFS. It consists of two parts: a shared library which is loaded by applications supporting GIO
GIO (Gnome)
GIO provides a modern, easy-to-use VFS API that sits at the right level in the library stack. The goal is to overcome the shortcomings of GnomeVFS and provide an API that is so good that developers prefer it over raw POSIX calls. It ships with GLib as a separate library called libgio-2.0...

, and GVFS itself, which contains a collection of daemon
Daemon (computing)
In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...

s which communicate with each other and the GIO module over D-Bus
D-Bus
In computing, D-Bus is a simple inter-process communication open-source system for software applications to communicate with one another. Heavily influenced by KDE2–3's DCOP system, D-Bus has replaced DCOP in the KDE 4 release. An implementation of D-Bus supports most POSIX operating...

.

, 107 of 113 registered GNOME components have been ported to GIO
GIO (Gnome)
GIO provides a modern, easy-to-use VFS API that sits at the right level in the library stack. The goal is to overcome the shortcomings of GnomeVFS and provide an API that is so good that developers prefer it over raw POSIX calls. It ships with GLib as a separate library called libgio-2.0...

, as necessary to support GVFS URI
Úri
Úriis a village and commune in the comitatus of Pest in Hungary....

s.
There are also a collection of command-line utilities such as gvfs-mount, gvfs-less to work with VFS resources.

See also

  • Archivemount
    Archivemount
    archivemount is a FUSE-based file system for Unix variants, including Linux. Its purpose is to mount archives to a mount point where it can be read from or written to as with any other file system...

  • KIO
    KIO
    KIO is part of the KDE architecture. It provides access to files, web sites and other resources through a single consistent API. Applications, such as Konqueror which are written using this framework can operate on files stored on remote servers in exactly the same way as they operate on those...

    , a similar facility for KDE
    KDE
    KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

    systems
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