
UnionFS creates a unified seamless filesystem by transparently overlaying files and directories from separate filesystems. Each participant directory is referred to as a branch, and when mounting branches, we can set priorities and access modes. In this short guide, we shall be looking at how to get it installed in Ubuntu 22.04. Other guides can be accessed from here: How To Install Nextcloud on a Linux system and How to install Gradle on Ubuntu and How to Install Apache OpenOffice on Ubuntu and How to Install MongoDB on a Linux System and How to install Node.js on Ubuntu
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Prerequisites
- A Linux Machine (Ubuntu 18 or Higher)
- A user account with sudo privileges
Step1: Update the package index
you can use the command below :
apt-get update
Step2: install Unionfs
you can use the command below:
sudo apt install -y unionfs-fuse
Step3: create two separate directories (branches) with two files each respectively
mkdir dir1
touch dir1/f1
touch dir1/f2
mkdir dir2
touch dir2/f3
touch dir2/f4
Step4: Let’s create an empty directory
This directory is where union will be mounted and we can do this with the command as shown below:
mkdir union
Step 5: Mount the two branches
we can overlay the two branches on top of each with the command :
unionfs dir1/:dir2/ union/
Step6: verify the files
we can do this with the command :
ls union/
Summary
We can use Unionfs to over several files by following the steps as shown above