archivemount(1)

NAME

archivemount – mount an archive for access as a filesystem

SYNOPSIS

archivemount [-hVdf] [-o option[,option]…]… archive mountpoint

DESCRIPTION

Mounts, through fuse(8), a file tree contained in archive on directory mountpoint. umount and fusermount -u can undo this mapping.

EXAMPLES

$ ls
files.tar.gz    mnt/
$ tar -tf files.tar.gz
file1           file2
$ archivemount files.tar.gz mnt
$ ls mnt
file1           file2
$ echo zupa > mnt/file3
$ rm mnt/file1
$ umount mnt
$ ls
files.tar.gz    files.tar.gz.orig       mnt/
$ tar -tf files.tar.gz
file2           file3

$ tar -tf voreutils.tar.gz
src/            src/…
man/            man/aliases              man/basename.1
README.md
$ archivemount -o subtree=man voreutils.tar.gz mnt
$ ls mnt
aliases         basename.1

OPTIONS

See fuse(8) for a complete list of the baseline FUSE options supported. The following options are handled specially by archivemount:

-h, --help: Write usage and all available options to standard error stream, then exit.
-V, --version: Write version of archivemount, libarchive, and FUSE to the standard output stream, then exit.
-r, -o ro, -o readonly: Disable writes entirely.
-o password: Prompt for archive passphrase.
-o nobackup: When saving writes, the original archive is moved to "archive.orig". This flag removes that file afterward.
-o nosave: Allow writes in memory, but don't actually write them out on unmount.
-o subtree=regex: Hide files not matching regex, and on those that do match, remove the matched prefix (cf. second example above). regex is a basic regular expression that behaves as-if prepended with the equivalent of "^.?". Implies -r.
-o formatraw: archive is actually a compressed file, made available under mounpoint/saved-filename or mounpoint/data. Implies -r.

BUGS

Writing archives, probably.

ARCHIVE FORMATS

See libarchive(3) for a definitive list, but all kinds of tar/ustar/pax/cpio archives, 7-Zip, ISO9660, ar, and RAR/Zip may be read. These may be compressed with gzip(1), xz(1), zstd(1), &c. and are processed transparently. The same applies for writing (except you can't write RARs).