You will need a working installation of python-fuse and Voldemort, both where Python can find and load them as "fuse" and "voldemort" respectively. Alternatively, you can define the environment variable VOLDFS_DB to any other module that can be loaded and uses the same interface as Voldemort; see fake.py for a simple example that's useful for debugging and development. To start, just do something like this: ./voldfs.py -s /tmp/myfs Yes, the -s is necessary, because something "down below" isn't thread-safe. For more updates, search for "VoldFS" on my site - http://pl.atyp.us TO DO: real attributes etc. general cleanup ("TBD" throughout the code) "update single allocated block" optimization conditional update in S3 back end caching S3 back end (local ops to FS + async write to S3)