howto-run-an-application-from-a-usb-drive-on-linux.md

HowTo Run Applications from a USB Drive on Linux

Because of the nature of USB drives, you can't, by default, run an application from the USB drive. USB drives are typically formatted as FAT32 filesystems (legacy Microsoft cruft) and FAT32 doesn't really understand "permissions" per ce. And since most USB drives are used for "data" and not "applications", permissions are usually fixed at 644 for files and 755 for directories. And they can't be changed with chmod like with normal Linux file system.

Assumptions

On a Ubuntu system, I believe USB drives automount at /media/<username>/<some-drive-label>

On a Fedora or Red Hat system, it will be mounted at /run/media/<username>/<some-drive-label>

For this exercise, we'll just assume Fedora's rules (they are more standard anyway) and you can adjust if you are using something else.

So, what to do?

There are a number of ways to allow executing scripts and applications from a USB drive formatted as a FAT32 filesystem. But we'll examine one method that is rather simple and doesn't ask the user to be a system administrator.

This is where the fuse filesystem once again proves itself to be the swiss-army-knife of filesystems. Someone made it possible to mirror a directory onto a fuse-mount, and then allow you to change the permissions of the files within that mirror. Pretty brilliant actually.

What you are going to do is mount your USB drive normally and then "bind-mount" it to another directory, setting different permissions in the process.

First, install bindfs

This enables a fuse filesystem with the "binding" capabilities we need.

# On Fedora
sudo dnf install -y bindfs

# On CentOS 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
sudo yum install -y bindfs

# On Ubuntu
sudo apt install bindfs

Insert USB stick and note the automount mountpoint

For this example, the username will be todd

Once inserted...

ll /run/media/todd
# ..or it could be...
ll /media/todd

You should see your USB drive there. Let's look at it...

ll /run/media/todd/toddsusb

It'll look something like this...

drwxr-xr-x. 9 todd todd     4096 Mar 15 08:43 backup
-rw-r--r--. 1 todd todd   445944 Mar 22 20:30 myapplication
-rw-r--r--. 1 todd todd 12197864 Mar 22 20:30 some-data.dat

That myapplication can't be run from the USB. And you can't chmod +x myapplication either.

Use bindfs to mirror and re-permission

Create a directory to bind-mount to...

cd -
mkdir myusb

Mount the mirror

cd -
sudo bindfs -M todd -p0700,u+X /run/media/todd/toddsusb myusb
ll myusb

You should see, in myusb...

drwx--x---. 9 todd todd     4096 Mar 15 08:43 backup
-rwx------. 1 todd todd   445944 Mar 22 20:30 myapplication
-rwx------. 1 todd todd 12197864 Mar 22 20:30 some-data.dat

myapplication is now executable. Run it with...

myusb/myapplication

Remember. This is a mirror. Whatever happens in this directory will be reflected in the originating directory. The permissions will remain unchanged.

Un-mounting

You can't just "un-mount" or "eject" the USB drive. You have to un-mount the mirror first, then un-mount the originating directory.

cd -
sudo umount myusb

Now safely un-mount the original. Either with a filesystem-menu or from the commandline...

sudo umount /run/media/todd/toddsusb

That's it! Pretty powerful, actually. I hope this was helpful.

Feedback and comments welcome at [email protected]