File management

File management and storage access in Alpine Linux Desktop environments involves various components. A file manager is a computer program that provides a user interface to file management i.e manage files and folders. In Alpine Linux file managers require additional software packages to:

• Automatically mount removable media
• Browse storage across shared networks
• Display and access partitions using different filesystems with other installed operating systems

Automounting USB drives

GVfs is a userspace virtual filesystem implementation for GIO,a library available in GLib. GVfs comes with a set of backends, including trash support, SFTP,SMB, HTTP, DAV, and many others. This also provides FUSE support that provides limited access to the GVfs filesystems for applications not using GIO.

To enable automatic mounting of USB drives, install the following packages:

# apk add gvfs udisks2

Depending on what devices you intend to mount, additional packages may be installed from the below list:

# apk add \ ntfs-3g \ # Stable, full-featured, read-write NTFS (driver) gvfs-cdda \ # CDDA support for gvfs gvfs-afp \ # AFP support for gvfs gvfs-goa \ # GNOME Online Accounts support for gvfs gvfs-mtp \ # MTP support for gvfs gvfs-smb \ # Windows fileshare support for gvfs gvfs-lang \ # Languages for package gvfs gvfs-afc \ # Apple mobile devices support for gvfs gvfs-nfs \ # NFS support for gvfs gvfs-dev \ # Backends for the gio framework in GLib (development files) gvfs-archive \ # Archiving support for gvfs gvfs-dav \ # WebDAV support for gvfs gvfs-fuse \ # FUSE support for gvfs gvfs-gphoto2 \ # gphoto2 support for gvfs gvfs-avahi \ # DNS-SD support for gvfs

To list descriptions of all gvfs- packages:

$ apk info -d gvfs-*

Network browsing

For browsing of network shares that works seamlessly with file associations, install the gvfs packages for the required network protocols. For example, to browse in a SMB/cifs windows network:

# apk add gvfs-smb

The OpenRC script for fuse is in a separate package.

# apk add fuse-openrc

Then the fuse service can be started manually.

# rc-service fuse start

If the desktop sessions are already in progress, they need to be restarted for the changes to take effect, i.e. log out and log in again.

Test the network browsing with your favourite file manager and if it works, the fuse service can be added to start up automatically at boot time:

# rc-update add fuse