Mount a bucket on Linux with s3fs

This guide is provided for informational purposes. Because it involves third party tooling we cannot guarantee things still work exactly as described here.

Linux brings the advantage of having a large number of open source solutions to access the Simple Object Storage. One of these is S3FS.

WARNING The Object Storage is not a disk drive! Using it as a storage backend with a database or similar from multiple machines may have unintended consequences.

Prerequisites

Before you start this guide, you will need to:

Create a SOS Bucket, either via the Portal or the CLI. See the Simple Object Storage documentation for more information.
Create an IAM key, also via the Portal or the CLI. See the IAM documentation for more information.

Installation

S3FS is supplied as a package in most Linux distributions, which makes the installation simple. Execute the following commands on a root console.

NOTE
S3FS could not show the file sizes before version 1.84. If you see only 0-byte files, update your S3FS version.

Ubuntu Linux 16.04 or higher, Debian Linux 9 or higher

apt install s3fs

RHEL 7 or newer, using EPEL:

yum install epel-release
yum install s3fs-fuse

SUSE 12 and openSUSE 42.1 or newer:

zypper install s3fs

Storing your access key

Save your access key as the root user:

echo API-KEY-HERE:API-SECRET-HERE > /root/.passwd-s3fs

Change its permissions:

chmod 0600 /root/.passwd-s3fs

Create a Folder

To mount the bucket, create an empty folder. This can be located in /mnt/sos:

mkdir /mnt/sos

Mount by Hand

Before we add the mount point permanently, you can try it by hand:

s3fs BUCKET-NAME-HERE /TARGET/DIRECTORY -o use_path_request_style -o url=https://sos-EXOSCALE-ZONE-ID.exo.io/

For example:

s3fs my-testbucket /mnt/sos -o use_path_request_style -o url=https://sos-at-vie-1.exo.io/

Automated Mount

To mount the object storage automatically at system start, edit the /etc/fstab file.

WARNING This file is required for a correct system start. If you make a mistake, your system may not boot. Make sure to read up on the restore procedure and create a backup (such as a snapshot) before you proceed.

Insert the following line followed by a new line character:

s3fs#BUCKET-NAME /TARGET/DIRECTORY fuse _netdev,allow_other,use_path_request_style,url=https://sos-EXOSCALE-ZONE-ID.exo.io/ 0 0

For example:

s3fs#my-testbucket /mnt/sos fuse _netdev,allow_other,use_path_request_style,url=https://sos-at-vie-1.exo.io/ 0 0

Now you can mount the folder.

mount -a

Last updated on March 31, 2026