Using Gmail Filesystem

Gmail Filesystem no longer works with the latest Gmail interface, and will not be maintained in the future. Please see the latest news article for details.

• You can mount your Gmail filesystem either via fstab or on the command line using mount.

  To use fstab, create an entry /etc/fstab that looks something like:
  

  /usr/local/bin/gmailfs.py /path/of/mount/point gmailfs noauto,username=gmailuser, password=gmailpass, fsname=zOlRRa
  Note: If you cut and paste this entry remember to remove the spaces after the commas

  The username and password fields speak for themselves. The fsname is the name of this Gmail filesystem. It is important to choose a hard-to-guess name here - because if others can guess the fsname, they can corrupt your Gmail filesystem by injecting spurious messages into your Inbox.

  To mount from the command line, do:

  mount -t gmailfs /usr/local/bin/gmailfs.py /path/of/mount/point -o username=gmailuser, password=gmailpass, fsname=zOlRRa
  Note: If you cut and paste this entry remember to remove the spaces after the commas

  Warning: both of these methods have serious security issues. If you run a multi-user system, others can easily see your Gmail username and password. As of version 0.4 Gmail Filesystem supports an external configuration file for setting most of the options mentioned above, as well as defining your proxy settings if you require them. You can see an example gmailfs.conf file in the distribution, edit it appropriately and copy it to /etc/gmailfs.conf. Note that to use the Gmail filesystem through a proxy you must have the appropriate SSL packages installed, under Debian installing the package named python2.3-pyopenssl will ensure you have the correct dependencies installed. If your distribution doesn't have a package you can download it from the pyOpenSSL webpage (you will also need the OpenSSL libraries). You will also need to download pyOpenSSLProxy and follow the installation instructions in the README. Note that HTTPS proxy support is optional, if you don't need it then Gmail Filesystem will work fine without these extra packages.

• GmailFS also has a blocksize option. The default blocksize is 5MB. Files smaller than the minimum blocksize will only use the amount of space required to store the file, NOT the full blocksize. Note that any files created during a previous mount with a different blocksize will retain their original blocksize until deleted. For most applications you will make best use of your bandwidth by keeping the blocksize as large as possible.
• When you delete files, GmailFS will place the files in the trash. libgmail does not currently support purging items from the trash, so you will have to do this manually when logged into your Gmail account.
• To avoid seeing the messages created for your Gmail filesystem you probably want to create a filter which automatically archives GmailFS messages as they come into your Inbox. The best approach is probably to search for the fsname value; it'll be in the subject of all GmailFS messages.