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How To Use SSHFS to Mount Remote File Systems Over SSH

Linux Basics

• By Paul White

  Last Validated onNovember 9, 2016 Originally Published onDecember 23, 2013 2m views

Introduction

In many cases it can become cumbersome to transfer files to and from a droplet. Imagine a development usage scenario where you are coding apps remotely and find yourself uploading a script repeatedly to your virtual server to test. This can become quite a hassle in a very short period of time. Luckily there is a way to mount your VPS file system to your local computer so you can make changes on the fly and treat your droplet as local storage. In this article, we will show you how to do exactly that.

Installing SSHFS

On Ubuntu/Debian

SSHFS is Linux based software that needs to be installed on your local computer. On Ubuntu and Debian based systems it can be installed through apt-get.

sudo apt-get install sshfs

On Mac OSX

You can install SSHFS on Mac OSX. You will need to download FUSE and SSHFS from the osxfuse site

On Windows

To install SSHFS in Windows you will need to grab the latest win-sshfs package from the google code repository. A direct download link can be found below. After you have downloaded the package, double click to launch the installer. You may be prompted to download additional files, if so the installer will download the .NET Framework 4.0 and install it for you.

https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-downloads/v2/code.google.com/win-sshfs/win-sshfs-0.0.1.5-setup.exe

Mounting the Remote File System

The following instructions will work for both Ubuntu/Debian and OSX. Instructions for Windows systems can be found at the bottom of the tutorial.

To start we will need to create a local directory in which to mount the droplet’s file system.

sudo mkdir /mnt/droplet <--replace "droplet" whatever you prefer

Now we can use sshfs to mount the file system locally with the following command. If your VPS was created with a password login the following command will do the trick. You will be asked for your virtual server’s root password during this step.

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,default_permissions root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

If your droplet is configured for login via ssh key authorization, you will need to tell sshfs to use your public keys with the following command. You will be asked to enter the passphrase you used during the creation of your keys with ssh-keygen.

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,default_permissions,IdentityFile=~/.ssh/id_rsa root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

In case that you don’t have your SSH key stored under the root user, you would need to specify the full path to the private SSH key as follows:

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,default_permissions,IdentityFile=/home/your_user/.ssh/id_rsa root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

Make sure to change the your_user part with your actual user.

Now you can work with files on your droplet as if it were a physical device attached to your local machine. For instance, if you move to the /mnt/droplet directory on your local machine you can create a file locally and the file will appear on your virtual server. Likewise, you can copy files into the /mnt/droplet folder and they will be uploaded to your droplet in the background.

It is important to note that this process provides only a temporary mount point to your droplet. If the virtual server or local machine is powered off or restarted, you will need to use the same process to mount it again.

Unmounting the Remote File System

When you no longer need the mount point you can simply unmount it with the command

sudo umount /mnt/droplet

Permanently Mounting the Remote File System

SSHFS also allows for setting up permanent mount points to remote file systems. This would set a mount point that would persist through restarts of both your local machine and droplets. In order to set up a permanent mount point, we will need to edit the /etc/fstab file on the local machine to automatically mount the file system each time the system is booted.

First we need to edit the /etc/fstab file with a text editor.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following entry

sshfs#root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

Save the changes to /etc/fstab and reboot if necessary.

It should be noted that permanently mounting your VPS file system locally is a potential security risk. If your local machine is compromised it allows for a direct route to your droplet. Therefore it is not recommended to setup permanent mounts on production servers.

Using Win-SSHFS to Mount Remote File Systems on Windows

After launching the win-sshfs program, you will be presented with a graphical interface to make the process of mounting a remote file share simple.

• Step 1: Click the Add button in the lower left corner of the window.
• Step 2: Enter a name for the file share in the Drive Name field.
• Step 3. Enter the IP of your droplet in the Host field.
• Step 4. Enter your SSH port. (Leave as port 22 unless you have changed the SSH port manually).
• Step 5. Enter your username in the Username field. (Unless you have set up user accounts manually you will enter root in this field).
• Step 6. Enter your SSH password in the password field. (Note on Windows you will need to have your droplet configured for password logins rather than ssh-key-authentication).
• Step 7. Enter your desired mount point in the Directory field. (Enter / to mount the file system from root. Likewise you can enter /var/www or ~/ for your home directory).
• Step 8. Select the drive letter you would like Windows to use for your droplets file system.
• Step 9. Click the Mount button to connect to the droplet and mount the file system.

Now your virtual server’s file system will be available through My Computer as the drive letter you chose in step 8.

Usage of the Remote Mount Point

The remote mount behaves similarly to locally mounted storage: you are able to create, copy, move, edit, compress or perform any file system operations you would be able to do on the droplet, but you are not able to launch programs or scripts on the remote server.

One typical usage of this would be if you host a website on your VPS and need to make changes to the website on a regular basis. Mounting the file system locally allows you to launch whatever code editor, IDE, or text editor you wish to edit the site, and any changes you make will reflect on the virtual server as soon as they are made on your local machine.

Similarly, on droplets used for testing purposes of coding projects, it allows for much simpler code modifications which can be tested immediately without the need to modify the code locally as well as remotely (and eliminates the hassle of uploading new copies of files for small code changes).

How to mount and manage non-native file systems in OS X with FUSE

https://clickety-clack.click/img/how-to-mount-and-manage-non-native-file-systems-in-os-x-with-fuse.html

Mac OS X supports a handful of common file systems—HFS+, FAT32, and exFAT, with read-only support

for NTFS. It can do this because the file systems are supported by the OS X kernel. Formats such as Ext3 for Linux systems are not readable, and NTFS can’t be written to. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasions when you’d want to use one of them. With FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) you can.

FUSE mimics the kernel’s handling of file systems and allows OS X to both interact with unsupported formats and use many other storage routines, some of which are rather creative. With FUSE, such formats can be handled very similarly to natively supported file systems and allow you to interact with drives your Mac otherwise could not read to or write from. Here’s how you can put FUSE to work.

What is FUSE?

FUSE works by providing a behind-the-scenes interface between Apple’s storage routines and specially programmed modules that you install on your Mac. These modules can read various storage formats, and then, with FUSE’s help, can be mounted and accessed as a drive-like storage medium. For instance, if you have several cloud-based storage accounts, you can write a small module that will connect all of these services with FUSE. You can then mount them as a single volume on the system

, much like you’d plugged in a USB drive.

FUSE has its limitations, however. File system access performs less well than with native kernel support, for example. On the other hand it offers vast flexibility in storage options

. For instance, in addition to using multiple Web storage services as a single drive, FUSE modules have been written to use PNG image files for storing drive data. In this case a mounted storage device’s data will be spread out among a number of garbled PNG images (a perhaps amusing, but frankly bizarre, way to manage your files).

These approaches are experimental and fun, but FUSE does have useful options that allow you to expand your Mac’s file system support beyond the natively supported formats, including allowing access to Ext3 drives, full NTFS support, and even letting you mount SFTP shares as local drives.

To get started, download and install FUSE for OS X. Once installed, you can install the desired module for the various file systems you would like to manage on your Mac. Keep in mind that some modules are well tested and regularly used, while others might not be. And some are more integrated in OS X while others will require Terminal commands to mount their file systems.

FUSE and NTFS

For NTFS support, one of the more popular FUSE modules is NTFS-3G, an open-source package from Tuxera. To acquire it you have several options. You can download an older precompiled version of NTFS-3G. The more technically inclined can download and compile the latest source code either directly from Tuxera or by using a package manager like MacPorts or Fink.

Once installed, an attached NTFS drive should be automatically recognized and mounted using NTFS-3G and FUSE. In addition, you should be able to format drives as NTFS using Disk Utility.

With the assistance of FUSE you can format drives as NTFS using Disk Utility.

Using Ext3

For Linux Ext2 and Ext3 file systems, you can use the fuse-ext2 module, and then mount Ext2 and Ext3 drives using Terminal (automatic mounting and managing in Disk Utility

is not yet supported). Follow these steps:

1. Install the ext2 FUSE module.

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2. Enable Disk Utility’s Debug menu, using the following command in Terminal, followed by opening Disk Utility and choosing the option in the Debug menu to show all partitions:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
	

3. Attach your ext2/ext3 drive and when it appears in Disk Utility (grayed out), select the volume and press Command-I to produce its Information window. In this window note the device name, which should be something like “disk2s2,” or “disk3s2.”

4. Create a new folder somewhere in your user account to use as a mount point for the drive (I recommend a folder called “mount” directly in your home folder).

5. Mount the drive using the following Terminal command syntax, replacing the device name and mount path with that of your disk and the path to the mount folder you created:

fuse-ext2 /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint
	

This will mount the drive as read-only, but you can use the “-o force” flag in the following manner to implement write support:

fuse-ext2 -o force /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint
	

After performing these steps, the ext2/ext3 drive will be fully accessible from the folder you created and specified to use as the mount point.

Using SSHFS

In addition to supporting locally attached drives, FUSE can be used to access remote systems and mount their shared resources locally. Granted, you can do this with SMB and AFP protocols when you have enabled File Sharing on a remote Mac, but since enabling SSH with the Remote Login service also enables SFTP access, you can use the SSHFS module for FUSE to access your Mac’s files directly over the encrypted SFTP connection.

1. Download and install the SSHFS module (available from the FUSE for OS X page).

2. As with managing Ext2 and Ext3 drives, create a folder on your Mac to use as a mount point

3. In Terminal, run a command similar to the following to access a folder on the remote system and mount it at the folder you created:

sshfs username@hostname:/remote/directory/path /local/mount/point
	

In this command, /remote/directory/path is the path to the desired folder on the remote server that you have access to. (Alternatively, you can just use a forward slash to mount the root directory.) The /local/mount/point is the full path on your current system to the new mount folder. For example, if you want to mount the entire root file system from the remote computer at a folder called “mount” in your home directory, then you would run a command similar to the following:

sshfs username@hostname:/ ~/mount
	

While these approaches with FUSE can be used to mount various file system formats, for the most part, you will not need special approaches for handling hard drives and other storage media. The built-in support in OS X is enough for most uses, but there are some special cases where the storage management options offered by FUSE can be useful.

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our for more details.

https://clickety-clack.click/img/fuse_for_macs.html

Setting up MacFUSE and sshfs (and more)

Background

The FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) system is a method to allow secure mounting of remote disks and filesystems without requiring root privileges on either end. While it began as a kernel extension for Linux, it is now available for OS X as well. (See the Fuse4X/OSXFUSE page for more information.)

Of particular interest to us is the Secure Shell Filesystem, sshfs.

SSHFS allows you to mount a remote disk from any computer for which you otherwise have ssh shell access. (SSHFS operates as a compiled shell around SFTP.) At that point, you have local Mac access to the files on the remote server, with the same (read-write-execute) permissions you would have if you had ssh'ed to start a remote shell on that computer. However, you can bring the power of your Mac to bear on those files, including editing them with local applications (TextWrangler, TeXShop, Photoshop), inspecting them (the Finder, QuickLook), and more.

Furthermore, SSHFS can do 'tricks' that NFS (Network File System) cannot, such as (a) mounting a server disk from a wireless computer and (b) not requiring root access on either the UNIX server or the local Mac.

Installation

While there are GUI installers available for this, it is very easy to get this running via MacPorts or Fink.

If you are running 10.6 installed by the ASD system team, then you probably have Fink (unless you installed MacPorts on your own). For 10.8 systems, ASD would have provided you with MacPorts, while the 10.7 systems are a mixture (look for /sw or /opt/local for Fink or MacPorts, respectively).

• MacPorts: sudo port install sshfs
• Fink: fink install sshfs

How to mount disks with sshfs

• Create a mount point. (Either do this once in a permanent location or create something under /tmp.)
  mkdir $HOME/my_remote_mount
  The name can be anything you want, but don't have spaces in the name.
• Simple version of the mount:
  sshfs remote_username@remote_host:/path/to/desired/dir $HOME/my_remote_mount
  e.g.,
  sshfs bobama@westwing.whitehouse.gov:/data/economic $HOME/my_remote_mount
  If your username is the same locally and remotely, you can omit it, as you would for plain ssh:
  sshfs westwing.whitehouse.gov:/data/economic $HOME/my_remote_mount

How to unmount disks

The man page for sshfs says to use fusermount -u usermount. This doesn't work for Macs because the fusermount command does not exist! Fortunately, there are various easy ways to unmount the disk:

• From the command line:
  umount /path/to/mount/point
  e.g.,
  umount $HOME/my_remote_mount
• From the Finder, drag the remote disk to the Trash
• From the Finder, right-click (or control-click) on the remote disk and Eject.

Create aliases to ease future use

Once you have your sshfs setup the way you like it, it is highly recommended to capture that into an alias that you place in your .cshrc or .bash_profile startup file. It could be something like this:

tcsh version:
alias my_econ 'sshfs bobama@westwing.whitehouse.gov:/data/economic $HOME/my_remote_mount'

bash version:
alias my_econ='sshfs bobama@westwing.whitehouse.gov:/data/economic $HOME/my_remote_mount'