Permissions issues with 9P mount

[rara1234]

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS in a VM on an HP Gen8 Microserver. I have a share on the host

/mnt/user/Dropbox

mounted at

/mnt/dropbox-fs

in the VM and then a symlink

/mnt/dropbox-fs --> /home/robert/Dropbox

. i'm running Dropbox installed from https://www.dropbox.com/en_GB/install?os=lnx and i've added the following entry to my fstab to auto-mount the 9p "share":

 

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
...
dropbox-fs /mnt/dropbox-fs 9p rw,noatime,trans=virtio,access=any,nobootwait,uid=99,gid=100,version=9p2000.L 0 0

Whenever files or folders are created by Dropbox they are created in the context of the user running dropbox on the ubuntu VM (uid=1000), and this causes problems in unraid e.g. see

ls

below. I've tried it with and without the

uid=99,gid=100

and it doesnt fix it.

 

root@fs:/mnt/user/Dropbox# ls -al
total 74616
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users     4096 Oct 22 20:00 ./
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users       66 Oct 22 20:00 ../
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root    1000       34 Oct 18 21:09 .dropbox*
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users    32768 Oct 22 19:30 .dropbox.cache/
-rw-rw-rw- 1 nobody users      150 Jul 25 19:39 .ynabsettings\ (Case\ Conflict).yroot
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users      110 Oct 22 20:00 Apps/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users   258048 Oct 21 23:01 Camera\ Uploads/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root    1000        6 Oct 22 19:26 Camera\ Uploads\ (Selective\ Sync\ Conflict)/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users       63 Jul 25 23:48 Garden\ automation/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users       20 Jul 25 20:51 IFTTT/
-rw-rw-rw- 1 nobody users    17970 Jul 25 19:39 London.ovpn
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users       78 Jul 25 23:49 Photos/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users     4096 Jul 25 23:49 Photos\ of\ kieran/

 

[rara1234]

Anyone?

[jonp]

Sorry for the delayed reply.  Permissions issues with 9P can be tricky to diagnose / debug.  9P shares are really an advanced user feature we put in for folks that can google search their way to a solution.  There are probably better and easier ways to accomplish what you're looking for than using 9P.  One would be to simply mount an SMB share in your VM instead of a 9P share.  Another would be to skip the VM and use a Dropbox docker container instead, which could make life a lot simpler.  Have you tried either of those avenues yet?

[rara1234]

Hi jonp,

 

I moved from a docker to using a VM as Dropbox doesn't seem to like being in a docker - no matter what i redirected outside the container, it always needed reconnecting every time the container was updated, and it's a hassle, and also i have a lot of files being monitored - about 50k - and any containers i've tried dont have fs.inotify.max_user_watches set high enough.

 

The VM also hosts some other apps whcih i want to use but which aren't in containers, and i just dont have the time right now to learn how to create them. Maybe i will in future.

 

I already switched to using SMB and that works perfectly (as far as i can tell). From what i can tell from Google, the main issue with 9p is that it's really hard to diagnose, and that they tend to ignore most "traditional" mount attributes.

[jonp]

Hi jonp,

 

I moved from a docker to using a VM as Dropbox doesn't seem to like being in a docker - no matter what i redirected outside the container, it always needed reconnecting every time the container was updated, and it's a hassle, and also i have a lot of files being monitored - about 50k - and any containers i've tried dont have fs.inotify.max_user_watches set high enough.

 

The VM also hosts some other apps whcih i want to use but which aren't in containers, and i just dont have the time right now to learn how to create them. Maybe i will in future.

 

I already switched to using SMB and that works perfectly (as far as i can tell). From what i can tell from Google, the main issue with 9p is that it's really hard to diagnose, and that they tend to ignore most "traditional" mount attributes.

 

I agree with your assessment of 9P.  There are some interesting use-cases we have found for it (like with our OpenELEC VM template) but I don't think it's really a good general-purpose tool for users.