Mount a Bucket as a Filesystem | ibee

A bucket can be mounted as a local filesystem, letting tools that expect POSIX paths read and write objects without any code changes. This is useful for migrations, backup tools, build pipelines, or any utility that doesn’t speak S3 natively.

Object Storage isn’t a real POSIX filesystem. Mounted access works well for sequential reads, batch writes, and general file workflows — but avoid it for random small writes or anything that depends on file locking.

Before you begin

A bucket (Create a bucket)
An API credential with at least Object Read & Write scope on the target bucket
The S3 endpoint for the bucket’s workspace: https://{workspaceId}.blob.ibeestorage.com (shown as S3 Endpoint when you create the credential)

Pick a tool

Tool	Best for	Notes
s3fs	Linux / macOS — quick mount of a single bucket	Simple, FUSE-based
rclone	Cross-platform, large transfers, scripting	Has both `mount` and `sync` modes

s3fs (Linux / macOS)

Install:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt-get install s3fs
# macOS
brew install s3fs

Save your credentials:

echo "AKIA...:<your-secret-access-key>" > ~/.passwd-s3fs
chmod 600 ~/.passwd-s3fs

Mount the bucket:

mkdir -p /mnt/my-bucket
s3fs my-bucket /mnt/my-bucket \
    -o url=https://{workspaceId}.blob.ibeestorage.com \
    -o use_path_request_style \
    -o passwd_file=~/.passwd-s3fs

Now /mnt/my-bucket reads and writes against the bucket.

Unmount:

fusermount -u /mnt/my-bucket   # Linux
umount /mnt/my-bucket          # macOS

Auto-mount at boot (Linux)

Add to /etc/fstab:

my-bucket /mnt/my-bucket fuse.s3fs _netdev,allow_other,url=https://{workspaceId}.blob.ibeestorage.com,use_path_request_style,passwd_file=/root/.passwd-s3fs 0 0

rclone

Install: rclone.org/install

Configure a remote:

rclone config
# n) New remote
# name> ibee
# Storage> s3
# provider> Other
# access_key_id> AKIA...
# secret_access_key> <your-secret-access-key>
# endpoint> https://{workspaceId}.blob.ibeestorage.com

Mount:

mkdir -p /mnt/my-bucket
rclone mount ibee:my-bucket /mnt/my-bucket --vfs-cache-mode writes

Or sync without mounting:

rclone sync ./local-dir ibee:my-bucket/remote-dir

Performance notes

Sequential is fast, random is slow. Mounted filesystems shine for whole-file reads and writes; small in-place edits trigger full re-uploads.
Cache aggressively. Tools like rclone and s3fs have local cache options — use them.
Don’t use as a database backing store. No file locking, no atomic appends.

Common pitfalls

Symlinks are not real symlinks — they become regular files containing the link path.
File modification time comes from object metadata; tools that rely on mtime may behave unexpectedly.
du is slow because it has to list every object.