How to Mount Multiple Google Drives Using Autofs
Note: I am using a debian based system, so the commands below correspond to those types of systems.
Install autofs
If you don't already have autofs installed easily using apt.
sudo apt install autofs
Install google-drive-ocamlfuse
Next thing to do is install google-drive-ocamlfuse.
We enable the ppa using the following
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa -y
and then we can install it by
sudo apt update sudo apt install -y google-drive-ocamlfuse
Create configs for each google-drive
To create each config we need to add a config for each google-drive. Let's assume the first drive's
user name is USER1 and so we will create a $HOME/.gdfuse/USER1/config file.
This file should contain the following
acknowledge_abuse=false apps_script_format=desktop apps_script_icon= async_upload_queue=false async_upload_queue_max_length=0 async_upload_threads=10 autodetect_mime=true background_folder_fetching=false cache_directory= client_id= client_secret= connect_timeout_ms=5000 curl_debug_off=false data_directory= debug_buffers=false delete_forever_in_trash_folder=false desktop_entry_as_html=false desktop_entry_exec= disable_trash=false docs_file_extension=true document_format=desktop document_icon= download_docs=true drawing_format=desktop drawing_icon= form_format=desktop form_icon= fusion_table_format=desktop fusion_table_icon= keep_duplicates=false large_file_read_only=false large_file_threshold_mb=16 log_directory= log_to= lost_and_found=false low_speed_limit=0 low_speed_time=0 map_format=desktop map_icon= max_cache_size_mb=512 max_download_speed=0 max_memory_cache_size=10485760 max_retries=8 max_upload_chunk_size=1099511627776 max_upload_speed=0 memory_buffer_size=1048576 metadata_cache_time=60 metadata_memory_cache=true metadata_memory_cache_saving_interval=30 mv_keep_target=false presentation_format=desktop presentation_icon= read_ahead_buffers=3 read_only=false redirect_uri= root_folder= scope= service_account_credentials_path= service_account_user_to_impersonate= spreadsheet_format=desktop spreadsheet_icon= sqlite3_busy_timeout=5000 stream_large_files=false team_drive_id= umask=0o022 verification_code= write_buffers=false
Create this file for each drive you want added.
Authenticate each google-drive
For each config that you have created you will need to authenticate that account. To do this we simply
mount the each drive using google-drive-ocamlfuse. First we will want to make a temporary location to
mount the drive and then we will mount it and once we are sure it is working unmount it.
mkdir /tmp/google-drive google-drive-ocamlfuse -label USER1 -config .gdfuse/USER/config /tmp/google-drive
You should be prompted to sign in with your google account. Select the account you want to correspond to this mount. Once you have authenticated your account everything should be mounted, which you can easily check using
ls /tmp/google-drive
and verify that everything you expect is in there. If there seems to be something wrong then you can
try mounting again and add -d flag to turn on debugging.
Once you are sure things are working then unmount things
sudo umount /tmp/google-drive
Again, repeat this for each drive you want to mount, being sure to select the correct google account during authentication.
Create scripts to handle the mounts
Create gdfuse
Most of the magic will done by /usr/bin/gdfuse, which should contain the following
#!/bin/bash
label=$1
location=$2
CONFIG=$(echo $* | sed 's/.\+config=\(.\+\)/\1/')
USER=$(basename ${CONFIG%.gdfuse*})
FUSE=$(echo $* | sed 's/.\+-o \(.\+\),config=.\+/\1/')
sudo -u $USER /usr/bin/google-drive-ocamlfuse -config $CONFIG -label $label $location -o $FUSE
exit 0
Make sure you can execute this by running
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/gdfuse
Create autofs scripts
Add the following to /etc/auto.master
/media/Google /etc/auto.gdrive --browse
/media/Google is the directory where each drive will be mounted as sub-directories.
I like the --browse flag because it allows me to see the potential mount points and therefore I can do auto-completion.
To ensure we can mount this without any permission issues we are going to want to create /media/Google and then claim
ownership by
sudo mkdir /media/Google sudo chown $USER /media/Google
Create a /etc/auto.gdrive file and paste the following
MOUNT1 -fstype=fuse,rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,user,_netdev,config=$HOME/.gdfuse/DRIVE1_NAME/config :gdfuse\#LABEL1 MOUNT2 -fstype=fuse,rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,user,_netdev,config=$HOME/.gdfuse/DRIVE2_NAME/config :gdfuse\#LABEL2
You will need one command per google-drive mount. The above assumes you have two mounts to be mounted in
/media/Google/MOUNT1 and /media/Google/MOUNT2. The first mount will correspond to the config in
~/.gdfuse/DRIVE1_NAME while the second will correspond to the config in ~/.gdfuse/DRIVE2_NAME. Recall, these configs
were created earlier.
I tend to make drive names and the labels the same, but they don't have to be.
Restart autofs and test things out
Now is the time to see if our hard work has paid off. So, let's restart autofs and attempt to mount a drive
sudo systemctl restart autofs ls /media/MOUNT1
If everything worked you should see the contents of your google-drive corresponding to MOUNT1. If that didn't work
then I would suggest using autofs in debug mode... First we need to stop autofs
sudo systemctl stop autofs
Then we are going to want to start autofs in debug mode
sudo automount -f -v
Then try using ls on the problematic drive and make notes of the messages coming out of automount. Hopefully, it
will be obvious for you and you'll be able to fix things easily. Once you are done debugging kill the automount and
restart autofs
sudo systemctl start autofs