Useful Tips for ObjectiveFS

This article describes some useful tips when starting to use ObjectiveFS.

1. Verify server clock is synchronized

Check that NTP has a small offset (<1 sec):

Linux: /usr/sbin/ntpdate -q pool.ntp.org
macOS: System Preferences -> Date & Time -> Set date and time automatically

2. Config directory

The config command sets up several essential environment variables in the config directory, such as OBJECTIVEFS_LICENSE, ACCESS_KEY, SECRET_KEY, etc. The variables created by the config command depends on your object store. The variables in the config directory are read when ObjectiveFS is run.

You can always specify other environment variables (see supported environment variables) in the config directory. To set a variable, create a file with the name of the variable and the value as the file content.

For example, creating a file /etc/objectivefs.env/CACHESIZE with the content as 2G will set the memory cache size to 2GB when the filesytem is mounted.

3. Filesystem Passphrase

ObjectiveFS requires your filesystem passphrase to mount your filesystem. To avoid entering the passphrase manually each time you mount the filesystem, you can set your passphrase in /etc/objectivefs.env/OBJECTIVEFS_PASSPHRASE.

4. Mount on boot

To mount your filesystem on boot, see the following docs:

5. Mount options

Your filesystem can be mounted with different mount options to enable different features such as multithreading. The mount options can be specified on the command line with the -o flag or in /etc/fstab. Multiple mount options can be specified on the same line and are separated by commas.

The following examples uses the mt (multithreading) and compact=2 (compaction level 2) mount options to mount your filesystem on the command line and using /etc/fstab.

Command line:

$ sudo mount.objectivefs -omt,compact=2 <filesystem name> <directory>

/etc/fstab:

<filesystem name> <directory> objectivefs auto,_netdev,mt,compact=2 0 0

For a list of mount options, see here.

Useful Links

If you have questions, please contact us at support@objectivefs.com.

Last updated by ObjectiveFS staff, Oct 3, 2022

ObjectiveFS is a shared filesystem for Linux and macOS that automatically scales up and out with high performance. In production use by Fortune 500 companies since 2013.