TabFS

Setup

You need to compile the FUSE filesystem (written in C), then install the browser extension which runs it and talks to it.

First, make sure you git submodule update --init to get the fs/cJSON and fs/base64 dependencies.

And make sure you have FUSE. On Linux, for example, sudo apt install libfuse-dev. On macOS, get FUSE for macOS.

$ cd fs
$ mkdir mnt
$ make

Now install the native messaging host into your browser, so the extension can launch and talk to the filesystem:

$ ./install.sh [chrome | chromium | firefox]

I think it will work on Edge or Opera or whatever, too. You'll need to change the native messaging path in install.sh

Enable Developer mode. Load-unpacked the extension/ folder in this repo.

Now your browser tabs should be mounted in fs/mnt!

extension/: Browser extension, written in JS
fs/: Native FUSE filesystem, written in C
- tabfs.c: Talks to FUSE, implements fs operations, talks to browser.

When you, say, cat a file in the tab filesystem:

cat makes something like a read syscall,
which goes to the FUSE kernel module which backs that filesystem,
FUSE forwards it to the tabfs_read implementation in our userspace filesystem in fs/tabfs.c,
then tabfs_read rephrases the request as a JSON string and forwards it to the browser extension over 'native messaging',
our browser extension in extension/background.js handles the incoming message and calls the browser APIs to construct the data for that synthetic file;
then the data gets sent back in a JSON native message to tabfs.c and and finally back to FUSE and the kernel and cat.

(very little actual work happened here, tbh. it's all just marshalling)

TODO: make diagrams?

GPLv3

it's way too hard to make an extension. even 'make an extension' is a bad framing

open input space -- filesystem

now you have this whole 'language', this whole toolset, to control and automate your browser

OSQuery

fake filesystems talk

Screenotate

processes as files. the real process is the browser.

browser and Unix

rmdir a non-empty directory