Slashdot Mirror


GmailFS - The Google File System

Scott Granneman writes "Looking to use that new Gmail account for something really innovative? How about combining it with a brand new filesystem for Linux? Then GmailFS might be the answer: 'GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. ... GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename.'"

23 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. This seems horribly abusive of Google. by Sheetrock · · Score: 5, Insightful
    They've already made it plain they don't want third-party email account checkers; now you're going to subject them to transient file storage addons?

    They're supporters of Linux. Somehow, it doesn't seem like a very "on the spoke" maneuver to aggravate them.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




    1. Re:This seems horribly abusive of Google. by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Black hat hacking is clearly causing white hat hackers to lose toys these days...

      Take the XM-PCR case as an example. XM clearly went out of their way to provide an easy-to-hack-with-a-computer model of their devices. However, they provided that model with the unspoken proviso that it must be used ethically.

      Along comes a programmer with script-kiddie level skills who makes an automatic MP3 maker program that uses that device. That alone would have been fine by XM. However, that programmer decides to try to make a quick buck out of his work by selling it for $20 a copy. Furthermore, once media attention discovers his program, he raises the price.

      That's the kind of thing that awakens the sleeping RIAA, and the RIAA orders XM to send the programmer a legal nastygram in order to show that he is approching the limits of an untested area of law. Of course, Slashdot groupthink blames XM for the letter and calls for a boycott.

      Please people... RTFM before you start hacking anything. Especially, follow what the device makers tell you not to do, and don't try to seek direct obvious profits from your hacking.

      We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back. Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?

    2. Re:This seems horribly abusive of Google. by azaris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back. Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?

      I wouldn't call a piece of software that permits legal fair use to be "black hat". It's also strange that normally corporations who stomp on hackers trying to leverage their devices or services for relatively moderate ends get lambasted on /. but when that corporation happens to be Apple or Google, a lot of slashdotters put on the white knight armor and ride to the resque of an entity that surely has enough lawyers to fend off for themselves.

      Realistically though, GmailFS is and always will be a quirk. They can of course break it any time they want but since 1 gigabyte in storage space costs, what, a handful of glass beads nowadays, do you really think enough people will bother with this to cause serious scalability problems for a search engine company that handles a hundred million hits per day?

      To sum it up: wake up, Gmail isn't going to be cancelled just because somebody made a cute hack to use it as a filesystem. You can still pretend to be part of a special in-crowd of Google lovers because you managed to beg an invite off of someone.

    3. Re:This seems horribly abusive of Google. by nolife · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back.

      You give companies too much credit. If a company wanted something to really be hack friendly, there would be no complaints when it was hacked. They are not hack friendly if they complain about hacks. Your script kiddy comment is pretty lame. If the company made a product that someone with no skillz can hack it then the company got what they deserved. They choose to cut corners on security/development/testing or choose the wrong method to deliver the product to the users, either way it was a specific decision made by the company to maximize profits and they got burned. Any company can develop an encryption system in about 5 minutes and sell it for $50 a user. Imagine the profit that company can make until some script kiddy realizes it is only ROT15 and hacks it. It happens all the time with software and hardware. It is not always hacker friendly on purpose, it is cost cutting and/or a questionable business model. Remeber the CueCat?

      Wireless phone companies and makers (Cellular and cordless phones) started with and to some extent still use this exact business model. They were using analog signal totally unencrypted for anyone with a radio scanner to hear, cellular in the 860mhz region and cordless in the 49mhz and 900mhz region. These devices started to catch on and get a foothold. Suddenly the consumers started to wake up and realize anyone with a scanner or a UHF TV tuner could pick up these signals. Yes, on purpose, they chose to use something very unsecure, made no real attempt to make it known it was unsecure [1]. How did they fix it? Went to congress. Congress eventually gave them what they wanted and banned the cellular region from new scanner radios and made it illegal for people to knowingly listen to cellular and cordless freqs. The phone making companies knew all along these transmissions were open to anyone with a radio that picked up those bands, they chose to ignore it, not develop anything or use readily available technology at the time to encode or encrypt it because it would have cost them more money. They were not hacker friendly, just trying to make more money. To this day, analog cordless and wireless phone signals are still able to be picked up by anyone in plain form, although it illegal to do it (yeah, that is the only thing preventing it). Luckily for the most part, analog has been replaced on the cordless side with digital and digital spread spectrum and wireless has gone almost all digital with various methods of encryption and encoding. With that, it takes more then a consumer radio to eavesdrop now.

      Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?
      The only reason companies make and sell products is to make money. If they think it will sell, they will produce it.

      [1] I have never seen an analog cordless phone that mentions that it is easy to eavesdrop on. Many claim 65000 codes, extra privacy or security features, prevention of unauthorized use etc.. but they are all refering to the code needed to get a dialtone from the base station, not to hear the actual conversation in progress. It appears to be on purspoe that these security descriptions are very vague.

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    4. Re:This seems horribly abusive of Google. by RadGeekAuburn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Playing different regions games on your Xbox, PS2 or a DVD movie, hell, the whole chipping concept, using your Xbox joystick on your computer and visa versa, ripping DVD's, coping cd's, using a CueCat to scan your own barcodes, using a standalone email device with a different internet provider bypassing the monthly fee, ink jet refill kits, taking apart and reusing a disposible digital camera, pringles can for an antennea, using your wireless card as an access point, using GMail storage as a filesystem, changing hard coded default passwords, overclocking your MB or processor, removing resistor R232 from your cd burner to make it a 16x model instead of an 8x, flashing bios to get extra functionality of the next model, soldering a jumper to enable an extra feature. People will always attempt to bypass, modify, or extend the functionality of something. All it takes is one smart person to figure it out and let others know. I look at things from a different prespective. I do not view it as a company "letting" you do something with your hardware, ...

      [emphasis added --RGA]

      But, of course, when you use GMail storage for something that Google does not intend, you are not doing something with your hardware. You are doing something with someone else's hardware (and that is what makes it unlike all of the other cases that you cited).

  2. Competing Search Service ! by Mr+Europe · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ond now we'll put up a competing internet search service using GMail disk space !

  3. Re:why? by Tongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do men climb mountains, why do they explore new lands, why do they explore space or the depths of the oceans. Mankind does it because it's there (or can be done).

  4. Nice by Orgazmus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is really nice, but as i see it, there are two options:
    1) He gets his ass sued to hell
    2) He gets a nice job at google ;)

    --
    The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
  5. Portable partition by kaleco · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This could compliment a knoppix (or any liveCD) CD perfectly.

    --
    Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
  6. Great! by Yeechang+Lee · · Score: 5, Funny
    Thanks to GmailFS, I can now look forward to seeing the following files when I log into my computer:
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ylee ylee 2384 Aug 28 04:25 BUY V1AGRA N0W.pdf
    -rw------- 1 ylee ylee 3723 Aug 28 04:39 RE: Stupid weomn cheating.xls
    -rw------- 1 ylee ylee 2342 Aug 28 05:05 URGENT RESPONSE NEEDED.doc
    Thanks, GmailFS!
  7. Interesting by linuxci · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of course this is interesting, and shows the talents and ideas that can occur in the world of free/open software.

    But Google is a business and they do need to make money and this would be a surefire way for them to lose money (a load of their storage used up, no way to show their adverts, etc) so if anyone seriously used this I can imagine their account disabled.

    What I want is google officially creating (or officially blessing the ones that already exist) a gmail notifier app for Mozilla. Technically, using the 3rd party ones that the Mozilla community develop are against their terms of service. They already do an official notifier but it's Windows only - a Mozilla based one would be cross platform.

  8. Re:3rd party software by doofusclam · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you bothered to read that thread, or actually used gmail yourself, you'd know that they aren't cracking down on third party addons (although they'd be in the rights to do so) - they're just adding captcha style logons in situations where an incorrect password has been entered too many times. It's simply to stop programs brute forcing gmail accounts.

  9. Dont care if Google dont like it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now this is hacking. An off the wall idea and dare I say it, something uniqu, turned inot reality.

    Kids, look at this as an example of what sideways thinking can do. I love it - more because the true spirit of hacking is proven alive, rather than what it does.

    Although, that's pretty cool too.

  10. This could be useful by base3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    with some nice integrated encryption (saving a manual gpg step) for backup of small, important files.

    --
    One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  11. does it support the "account yanked" operation? by Daniel+Ellard · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is a cute hack, but practical? No.

    If you want google to paw through all your files and risk having your account yanked for violating the user agreement, feel free to use it... (heck, maybe google won't yank your account in return for the opportunity to index your files...)

    Mail-based file systems are nothing new, nor are http-based file systems (or WebDAV, for that matter).

    --
    Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
  12. Useless. Use GMX.net instead by killbill! · · Score: 5, Informative

    GMX has been offering 1 GB of storage for email and files for free for some time now.
    Expand this to 5 GB for 3 EUR / month or 10 GB for 5 EUR / month.

    You can also share your uploaded files with other GMX members, and mount your GMX account as a network drive using a WebDAV client (they provide a pre-configured Windows client but you may use another one) .

    By the way, their e-mail features totally 0wn any other e-mail service: automated e-mail retrieval from all your other POP-enabled mailboxes, custom filters for automatic redirection, SMS/MMS alerts, up to 15 aliases...

    I knew all that time spent learning German at school would come in handy some day! ;p

  13. Re:why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When you reach more than 100MB of 'your' storage space, Gmail contacts you and asks to remove some data, even if (in our case) it were legitimate hi-res surface-scans of metal structures, entirely educational.

    I confess that I assumed they would do something like that. 1GB per quasi-anonymous, non-profit user is too ridiculous for them to keep it up.

  14. hi Bender ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "it were legitimate hi-res surface-scans of metal structures, entirely educational."

    That's a nice way to describe robot pr0n, Bender. Way to go!

  15. FYI: German webmail provider GMX offers 1GB WebDAV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It has to be about Google to be newsworthy, hasn't it? GMX, a German webmail provider, offers free 1GB mail accounts which are accessible by web, POP3 and WebDAV. You can also share your files with other GMX users. Transfer volume is limited to twice the storage amount per month.

  16. Re:This seems NOT horribly abusive of Google. by lombre · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is not an abuse of Google. Google only offers 1 G which is only 1% of the typical hard drive today, or just a little more than a CD. Performance will be abismal.

    Except for offline backup (which you could already manually use GMail for) this is not very useful. Even for that it isn't really useful since Google could cancel you account if they don't like how you use it.

    This is really just expression of "I could do it".

    Even so, if they used the gimick of 1 G of email for marketing but expected nobody to use it, tough, they don't get to completely control how you use their product.

    As far as the XM-PCR, this is just the like a VCR for XM radio. How is this an abuse? The recording is analog, all the program does is allow a time shift. These are all things that anybody could do manually for a long time. Should we take away VCRs and Tivo just because broadcasters would prefer we had to watch TV under their rules?

    You already have the capacity but not the right to sell or distribute most of the content that XM transmits.

    They did not go "out of their way". They did it to sell more subscriptions.

    This program actually makes XM radio more marketable.

    When you create a product, you do not get to regulate every thing your customers do with it. Soon we will have Kellogs telling us that we cannot make our own rice krispie bars (i.e. we have to buy their Rice Krispie Treats) with the box of cereal we bought as this violates the "license".

  17. Re:begging for it... by Destoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because of NialScorva's Law, derived from Godwin's law.

    NialScorva's Law:
    Given enough time, all legal battles in the tech industry will invoke the DMCA.

    But you're right. Not insightful.

    --
    Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
  18. i just invented SLASHDOT_FS by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Hi I'm working on a flie system called SLASHDOT_FS. it treats the slashdot message posting system as an unlimited write-once file storage system. Data is written to a comments and then changes are updated as diffs in the replys.

    comments are encrypted and written using dictionary words to avoid the lameness filter.

    I implemented the prototype of this system many years ago using an encoding system called First-Post. I simply use different permuations of the words first-post (FP!, Frist psot!, etc...) along with various dummy account names to encode 1 Kilobyte of information. I run the whole thing off ny Newton.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  19. Re:where's the evidence? by yuting · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google's Terms of Use:

    http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/terms_of_use.ht ml

    "You also agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automated device, or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Service"

    On GMail-User newsgroup there have been reports of Google temporarily disabling accounts who use software to check GMail. Having said that, Google's own mail checker checks mail every 2 minutes. And most people who use third-party software to access GMail don't seem to have problems. Google's reaction to the breach of their ToS seems to be as random as the way they give out GMail invites...