# MooseFS – A Petabyte Distributed File System

MooseFS logo

MooseFS is a Petabyte Open Source Network Distributed File System. It is easy to deploy and maintain, highly reliable, fault tolerant, highly performing, easily scalable and POSIX compliant.

MooseFS spreads data over a number of commodity servers, which are visible to the user as one resource. For standard file operations MooseFS acts like ordinary Unix-like file system:

* A hierarchical structure – **directory tree**
* Stores **POSIX file attributes** – permissions, last access and modification times, etc.
* Supports **ACLs**
* Supports POSIX and BSD **file locks** – including support for **distributed file locking**
* Supports **special files** – block and character devices, pipes and sockets
* Supports **symbolic links** – file names pointing to target files, not necessarily on MooseFS
* Supports **hard links** – different names of files which refer to the same data on MooseFS

## Distinctive MooseFS features

* **High reliability** – files are stored in several copies on separate servers. The number of copies is a configurable parameter, even per each file
* **No Single Point of Failure** – all hardware and software components may be redundant
* **Parallel** data operations – many clients can access many files concurrently
* Capacity can be **dynamically expanded** by simply adding new servers/disks on the fly
* Retired hardware **may be removed on the fly**
* Deleted files are retained for a configurable period of time (a **file system level "trash bin"**)
* **Coherent, "atomic" snapshots** of files, even while the files are being written/accessed
* **Access to the file system can be limited** based on IP address and/or password (similarly as in NFS)
* **Data tiering** – supports different storage policies for different files/directories in Storage Classes mechanism
* Per-directory, **"project" quotas** – configurable per RAW space, usable space, number of inodes with hard and soft quotas support
* Apart from file system storage, MooseFS also provides **block storage** (`mfsbdev`)
* Efficient, **pure C** implementation
* **Ethernet** support


## Supported platforms

MooseFS can be installed on any POSIX compliant operating system including various Linux distributions, FreeBSD and macOS:

* Ubuntu
* Debian
* RHEL / CentOS
* Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux
* OpenSUSE
* Arch Linux
* Alpine Linux
* FreeBSD
* macOS

MooseFS Client uses FUSE library, available for: [Linux & BSD](https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse) and [macOS](https://github.com/macfuse/macfuse).

There is a separate MooseFS Client for Microsoft Windows available, built on top of [Dokany](https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany).


## Getting started

You can install MooseFS using your favourite package manager on one of the following platforms using [officially supported repositories](https://moosefs.com/download):

**`i386`**:

* Debian 9 / 10
* Ubuntu 16
* FreeBSD 11 / 12 / 13 / 14

**`amd64`**:

* Debian 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13
* Ubuntu 16 / 18 / 20 / 22 / 24 / 26
* RHEL / CentOS 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
* Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux 8 / 9 / 10
* Fedora 44
* FreeBSD 11 / 12 / 13 / 14
* macOS 10.12+

**`armhf`**:

* Debian 11 / 12 / 13
* Ubuntu 20 / 22 / 24

**`arm64`**:

* Debian 11 / 12 / 13
* Ubuntu 20 / 22 / 24 / 26
* RHEL / CentOS 9 / 10
* Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux 9 / 10

Packages for CentOS 6 (`i386`, `amd64`) are also available, but no longer supported.

Debian packages are compatible with Proxmox.  
RPM packages are compatible with openSUSE Leap.

Minimal set of packages, which are needed to run MooseFS:

* `moosefs-master` MooseFS Master Server for metadata servers,
* `moosefs-chunkserver` MooseFS Chunkserver for data storage servers,
* `moosefs-client` MooseFS Client – client side package to mount the filesystem.


### Source code

Feel free to download the source code from our GitHub code repository!

Install the following dependencies before building MooseFS from sources:

* **Debian / Ubuntu**:  
  `sudo apt install build-essential libpcap-dev zlib1g-dev libfuse3-dev pkg-config`  
  if you don't have FUSE 3.x in your system, use:  
  `sudo apt install build-essential libpcap-dev zlib1g-dev libfuse-dev pkg-config`  
  
* **CentOS / RHEL / Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux**:  
  `sudo yum install gcc make libpcap-devel zlib-devel fuse3-devel pkgconfig`  
  if you don't have FUSE 3.x in your system, use:  
  `sudo yum install gcc make libpcap-devel zlib-devel fuse-devel pkgconfig`

Recommended packages:

* **Debian / Ubuntu**:  
  `sudo apt install fuse3`  
  if you don't have FUSE 3.x in your system, use:  
  `sudo apt install fuse`  
  
* **CentOS / RHEL / Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux**:  
  `sudo yum install fuse3`  
  if you don't have FUSE 3.x in your system, use:  
  `sudo yum install fuse`


### Building MooseFS:

* Linux: Run `./linux_build.sh`
* FreeBSD: Run `./freebsd_build.sh`
* macOS: Run `./macosx_build.sh`  
  (note: macFUSE must be installed beforehand)

These scripts only build MooseFS and do not install binaries (i.e., they do not run `make install`). To install them, run `make install` (as `root` or `sudo make install`) manually.


### Minimal setup

Just three steps to have MooseFS up and running:


#### 1. Install at least one Master Server

1. Install `moosefs-master` package
2. Prepare default config (as `root`):
```
cd /etc/mfs
cp mfsmaster.cfg.sample mfsmaster.cfg
cp mfsexports.cfg.sample mfsexports.cfg
```
3. Prepare the metadata file (as `root`):
```
cd /var/lib/mfs
cp metadata.mfs.empty metadata.mfs
chown mfs:mfs metadata.mfs
rm metadata.mfs.empty
```
4. Run Master Server (as `root`): `mfsmaster start`
5. Make this machine visible under `mfsmaster` name, e.g. by adding a DNS entry (recommended) or by adding it in `/etc/hosts` on **all** servers that run any of MooseFS components.


#### 2. Install at least two Chunkservers

1. Install `moosefs-chunkserver` package
2. Prepare default config (as `root`):
```
cd /etc/mfs
cp mfschunkserver.cfg.sample mfschunkserver.cfg
cp mfshdd.cfg.sample mfshdd.cfg
```
3. At the end of `mfshdd.cfg` file make one or more entries containing paths to HDDs / partitions designated for storing chunks, e.g.:
```
/mnt/chunks1
/mnt/chunks2
/mnt/chunks3
```
It is recommended to use XFS as an underlying filesystem for disks designated to store chunks.

4. Change the ownership and permissions to `mfs:mfs` to above mentioned locations:
```
chown mfs:mfs /mnt/chunks1 /mnt/chunks2 /mnt/chunks3
chmod 770 /mnt/chunks1 /mnt/chunks2 /mnt/chunks3
```
5. Start the Chunkserver: `mfschunkserver start`

Repeat steps above for the second (third, ...) Chunkserver. More than two Chunkservers are **strongly** recommended.


#### 3. Client side: mount MooseFS filesystem

1. Install `moosefs-client` package
2. Mount MooseFS (as `root`):
```
mkdir /mnt/mfs
mount -t moosefs mfsmaster: /mnt/mfs
```
or: `mfsmount -H mfsmaster /mnt/mfs` if the above method is not supported by your system

3. You can also add an `/etc/fstab` entry to mount MooseFS during the system boot:
```
mfsmaster:    /mnt/mfs    moosefs    defaults,mfsdelayedinit    0 0
```

There are more configuration parameters available but most of them may stay with defaults. We do our best to keep MooseFS easy to deploy and maintain.

MooseFS, for testing purposes, can even be installed on a single machine!


#### Additional tools

Setting up `moosefs-cli` or `moosefs-gui` is also recommended – it gives you a possibility to monitor the cluster online:

1. Install `moosefs-cli` and `moosefs-gui` packages (they are typically set up on the Master Server)
2. Run MooseFS CGI Server (as `root`): `mfsgui start`
3. Open http://mfsmaster:9425 in your web browser

It is also **strongly** recommended to set up at least one Metalogger on a different machine than Master Server (e.g. on one of Chunkservers). Metalogger constantly synchronizes and backups the metadata:

1. Install `moosefs-metalogger` package
2. Prepare default config (as `root`):
```
cd /etc/mfs
cp mfsmetalogger.cfg.sample mfsmetalogger.cfg
```
3. Run Metalogger (as `root`): `mfsmetalogger start`

Refer to [installation guides](https://moosefs.com/support/#documentation) for more details.


## Some facts

* Date of the first public release: 2008-05-30
* The project web site: https://moosefs.com
* Installation and using MooseFS: https://moosefs.com/support
* (Old) Sourceforge project site: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moosefs


## Contact us

* Reporting bugs: [GitHub issue](https://github.com/moosefs/moosefs/issues) or [support@moosefs.com](mailto:support@moosefs.com)
* General: [contact@moosefs.com](mailto:contact@moosefs.com)


## Copyright

Copyright © 2008-2026 Jakub Kruszona-Zawadzki, Saglabs SA

This file is part of MooseFS.

MooseFS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2 (only).

MooseFS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with MooseFS; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111-1301, USA or visit http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html.
