Skip to content

VirtFS

VirtFS is a filesystem interface designed for passthrough in a KVM environment.
It is based on the VirtIO framework and uses the 9P protocol.

This makes it possible to mount paths directly to the VM instead of using a network protocol.
I am using this feature to use on my VM that is making backups.

Setup in Unraid

To set this up in Unraid, you need to go to your Linux VM and click "Edit".
Scroll down to "Unraid Share" and fill in nessesary information:

And click "Save"

Setup in the Linux VM

Add the following in /etc/fstab:

sixpool /mnt/sixpool 9p trans=virtio,version=9p2000.L,_netdev,ro,cache=none,msize=524288 0 0
This will then mount sixpool in directory /mnt/sixpool.


Im using following parameters for my backupserver:

  • "ro" - This is to make sure i can only read on this share (Beacuse the backupserver only needs read access).
  • "cache=none" - Making sure data is not cached.
  • "msize=524288" - Increases the maximum packet payload size from 8192 (8 KB) to 524288 (512 KB), this is used to increase the troughput in 9p.


You can then restart the server, or just type the following to mount the share: 

mount /mnt/sixpool