https://github.com/tchajed/rust-nbd
Network Block Device (NBD) server and client written in Rust
https://github.com/tchajed/rust-nbd
nbd rust
Last synced: 6 months ago
JSON representation
Network Block Device (NBD) server and client written in Rust
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/tchajed/rust-nbd
- Owner: tchajed
- License: mit
- Created: 2022-06-07T18:47:09.000Z (over 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2024-03-18T16:02:57.000Z (over 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2024-03-19T17:07:56.280Z (over 1 year ago)
- Topics: nbd, rust
- Language: Rust
- Homepage:
- Size: 178 KB
- Stars: 7
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# rust-nbd
[](https://github.com/tchajed/rust-nbd/actions/workflows/build.yml)
Implementation of a basic Network Block Device (NBD) server and client written
in Rust. NBD is a Linux kernel feature that exports a block device over the
network, with commands for reading and writing blocks of the device by offset.
The kernel natively supports NBD, but you do need `sudo modprobe nbd` to
initialize the kernel module.
This code implements:
- Rust modules that implement the client and server parts of the NBD protocol.
- A userspace NBD server that is compatible with Linux.
- A Rust re-implementation of the `nbd-client` utility (from the [standard userland tools](https://github.com/NetworkBlockDevice/nbd)). This avoids needing to install anything extra to use NBD.
All of the interactions with the kernel are very Linux-specific.
macOS does not provide an nbd kernel component, but it can run the server.
There is also a Rust library to interact with the server that would work if you
wanted to use nbd from userspace.
Here's a quick demo of running the server and connecting with the client:
```
$ cargo run --release -- --size 1000 disk.img &
$ sudo modprobe nbd
$ cargo run --bin client -- /dev/nbd0
```
The client automatically escalates to root with `sudo` in order to have the
necessary privilege to set up the block device. Now we can interact with
`/dev/nbd0` as with any other block device, for example with `dd` (more
interestingly, you can use `mkfs.ext` to create a file system there and then
`mount` it):
```
$ sudo chown $USER /dev/nbd0
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nbd0 bs=4096
```
Finally, make sure to disconnect before running again:
```
$ cargo run --bin client -- --disconnect /dev/nbd0
```