An option to limit to a single filesystem (like -xdev)

[richlv]

What would you like to be added:
An option to limit to a single filesystem would be great. To borrow from find's manpage:

-xdev  Don't descend directories on other filesystems.

Why is this needed:
Scanning a directory like / ends up in /proc/, /dev/ and other places.
Sometimes that leads to a hang, like in #665.

[spiffcs]

Nice! Thanks for the request @richlv.

We're actively working on a fix so we don't hit these paths and hang as reported. We'll also see if we can add specific options for inclusion vs exclusion in the future.

See #667 for PR progress on the hang fixes.

[stefan123t]

+1 for an -x<exclude_path> option.
I have Syft running through my /home/.ecryptfs/ folder which will do no harm, but does not yield any tangible results either.
syft packages dir:/ --scope all-layers -o table | grep log4j

[richlv]

One filesystem option and excludes are a bit different features - should they be split out as different feature requests?

[kzantow]

FYI - an --exclude flag was just merged (for #221). Once released, in the case you're doing a directory scan - as @stefan123t's example, you should now be able exclude a sub-path explicitly, for example:

syft --exclude ./home/.ecryptfs dir:/

This, of course, doesn't directly address the issue of excluding a filesystem.

[richlv]

Thank you, --exclude looks great.
To clarify, this issue is not about excluding a filesystem, but about limiting to the filesystem, on which the scanning start point is - pretty much the same as for find.

While --exclude could be used for this by explicitly listing all other filesystems below the starting point, that's not flexible (depends on the target system) and less convenient.

[ajvpot]

I opened a draft pull request in #816 that implements this.

[spiffcs]

Hey everyone! With #667 merged and the base ability to ignore proc/dev as well as the configuration options here #221 for specific files we're going to consider this issue closed for now. If anyone has other ideas or features tag me and I can look at the PR or reopen this issue. Thanks!

[richlv]

Heya @spiffcs, thank you for looking into this.
The added features look great, although limiting to a single filesystem is different - it could still be useful when, for example, / has OS related files, and some other filesystem has a lot of huge application files (that are rarely updated).
The root filesystem would be useful to scan more often, while the more static app one would only be of interest after any changes there.
If usecases like that make sense, could this issue please be reopened?

[richlv]

Hi, still very much interested in this feature - should I create a new issue?