Hacking Gmail

Using GmailFS

V

ery early on in the life of the Gmail beta program, Richard

Jones out-geeked everyone with the release of version 0.1

of the GmailFS — a mountable file system for Linux

machines that uses Gmail as the storage mechanism. This chapter

examines GmailFS and discusses how it works and how to use it.

The Underlying Idea

The shocking thing about Gmail, apart from the cleverness of the

asynchronous JavaScript and XML interface, is the amount of

storage available to the user. A gigabyte is a lot of space for mail,

especially when it is free. It’s so much space, indeed, that the sec-

ond question on a lot of people’s lips (after “How do they do

that” had been answered) was, “What can you do to fill it up?”

The answer, Richard Jones decided, was to use Gmail as the stor-

age for a file system. One gigabyte is a nice size for an emergency

backup, or to share files between friends. It is, after all, 200 or so

good-sized MP3 files — legally downloaded, of course.

Installing GmailFS

GmailFS works on Linux machines only. For Windows machines,

the equivalent program is GmailDrive.

The Correct Python

First, you need to make sure you have Python 2.3 installed. Python

will probably have come pre-installed with your OS, but you need

to make sure it is version 2.3 or above. There are many tests for

this, depending on your system.

Installing GmailFS

̨Using Gmail FS

How GmailFS Works

chapter

in this chapter