File management

File management and storage access in Alpine Linux desktop environments (DEs) involve various components. 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

Prerequisites

Enable Polkit for privileged operations using a GUI

File managers

File managers provide a user interface for file management i.e to manage files and folders. A partial list of file managers available in Alpine Linux is given below:

Tool	Graphical/TUI/CLI	Brief Notes
caja	Graphical	The file manager for the MATE desktop
clifm	CLI	The shell-like command line terminal file manager
dolphin	Graphical	File manager for KDE Plasma desktop
konqueror	Graphical	KDE file manager and web browser
krusader	GUI	Twin panel, Commander-style file manager
lf	TUI	Terminal file manager written in Go with vim-style keybindings
lomiri-filemanager-app	Graphical	Convergent file manager: for mobiles, desktops e.g. Lomiri DE, postmarketOS
mc	TUI	Midnight Commander file manager/shell that emulates Norton Commander
nautilus	Graphical	GNOME file manager also known as 'GNOME Files'
nemo	Graphical	File manager for Cinnamon desktop environment
nnn	TUI	The unorthodox terminal file manager
pcmanfm	Graphical	Extremely fast and lightweight file manager for LXDE
pcmanfm-qt	Graphical	Qt port of pcmanfm
ranger	TUI	vim-inspired file manager for the console
spacefm	GUI	File manager (GTK2 version) from a legacy pcmanfm fork
thunar	Graphical	File manager for Xfce
vifm	TUI	vim-like file manager using ncurses
xfe	GUI	Commander-like file manager for X
yazi	TUI	File manager written in Rust with asynchronous I/O, vim-like input and bulk rename

Automounting removable storage

The tools GVfs and Udisks enable automatic mounting of removable storage such as USB drives, external HDDs, and network drives. To install them, issue the command:

# apk add gvfs-fuse udisks2

To mount encrypted devices, ensure that appropriate packages such as device-mapper and lvm2 are installed.

Udisks

udisks makes managing disks, including removable drives such as USB, much easier by providing a udisks daemon and udisksctl, a cli-based tool.

Action	Command
To see the mounted disks	udisksctl status
To mount a disk /dev/sdb1	udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdb1
To unmount a disk, /dev/sdb1	udisksctl unmount -b /dev/sdb1

GVfs

Many GUI file managers rely on GVfs, a userspace virtual filesystem implementation. GVfs comes with a set of backends for SFTP, SMB, HTTP, DAV and many others. Depending on what devices you intend to mount, additional packages may be installed from the list below:-

Package Name	Brief Notes
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 to mount android devices
gvfs-smb	Windows fileshare support for gvfs
gvfs-lang	Languages for the gvfs package
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) - Alpine Linux v3.19-v3.20 only. v3.19.x-v3.20.x
gvfs-archive	Archiving support for gvfs
gvfs-dav	WebDAV support for gvfs
gvfs-fuse	FUSE support for gvfs to mount external storage devices
gvfs-gphoto2	gphoto2 support for gvfs
gvfs-avahi	DNS-SD support for gvfs

To list descriptions of all gvfs- packages:

$ apk info -d gvfs-*

In addition to the packages above, fuse service from fuse-openrc package is required for automounting a number of filesystems. To install it:

# apk add fuse-openrc

Start the fuse OpenRC service as follows:

# 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.

The fuse service can be added to start up automatically at boot time:

# rc-update add fuse

When polkit is used with seatd, additional configuration is required for automounting to work.

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

Enabling privilege escalation GUI

When using file managers, to enable the privilege escalation GUI for an admin user, implement the following:-

Install an appropriate polkit authentication agent for the desktop environment
Enable polkit to be used with elogind
Authentication agent is autostarted along with the desktop environment
A display manager is used to start the desktop session (recommended)

If the steps above are completed, whenever admin:// is typed in the address bar of the file manager, a password dialogue will appear.

Troubleshooting

Error due to missing polkit

Error mounting /dev/sda1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.NotAuthorized: Not authorized to perform operation (polkit authority not available and caller is not uid 0)

If polkit is not available, then the error above will occur. In this case, either install and enable polkit, or using doas is recommended.