How to Mount a Vultr File System Volume on Linux

Mounting a Vultr File System volume on Linux allows you to expand storage and share files across multiple Vultr Cloud Compute instances. This process involves creating a mount point, mounting the Vultr File System volume, and configuring it for automatic mounting at boot.

Follow this guide to mount a Vultr File System volume on Linux.

1. Check your system's Linux Kernel version and ensure it's 5.4.x or later.

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   $ uname -srm
   

2. Ensure your system is compatible with virtiofs.

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   $ sudo modinfo virtiofs
   

3. Verify that the virtiofs Kernel module is loaded.

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   $ lsmod | grep virtiofs
   

   If the virtiofs module is not loaded, run the following command to load it manually:

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   $ sudo modprobe virtiofs
   

4. Create a new directory such as /mnt/vfs to mount the Vultr File System volume.

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   $ sudo mkdir /mnt/vfs
   

5. Mount the Vultr File System volume to the directory using its Mount Tag. For instance, 79287343.

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   $ sudo mount -t virtiofs 79287343  /mnt/vfs
   

   Open the Vultr File System volume's management page to find the Mount Tag to use in the above command.

   

6. Query the /etc/mtab file to get information about the newly mounted volume.

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   $ sudo cat /etc/mtab | grep virtiofs
   

   Copy the command's output to your clipboard. For instance:

   79287343 /mnt/vfs virtiofs rw,relatime 0 0

7. Open the /etc/fstab file to automatically mount the new volume at boot.

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   $ sudo nano /etc/fstab
   

8. Append the volume information you copied earlier to the end of the file.

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   79287343 /mnt/vfs virtiofs rw,relatime 0 0
   

   Save and close the file.

9. List all mounted file systems and verify that the virtiofs volume is available.

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   $ df -hT
   

   Output:

   tmpfs          tmpfs      96M  1.2M   94M   2% /run
   /dev/vda2      ext4       23G  6.6G   16G  30% /
   tmpfs          tmpfs     476M     0  476M   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs          tmpfs     5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
   /dev/vda1      vfat      511M  6.1M  505M   2% /boot/efi
   tmpfs          tmpfs      96M  4.0K   96M   1% /run/user/1002
   79287343       virtiofs   80G     0   80G   0% /mnt/vfs

10. Create a new greetingsfromvultr.txt file in the /mnt/vfs directory to test write permissions on the volume.

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    $ echo "Greetings from Vultr" > /mnt/vfs/greetingsfromvultr.txt