HOWTO: Mount SSH Shares [Archive]

sciurus

December 15th, 2005, 04:17 AM

sshfs has the advantage over a KIOslave or GnomeVFS that any program can use it. For instance, in Kubuntu Amarok wasn't able to play my remote music through fish:/ but worked fine using sshfs.

1) Install the software
sudo apt-get install sshfs

2) Add fuse to /etc/modules
sudo nano /etc/modules

3) Add yourself to the 'fuse' group, then log out and log in again.
sudo adduser your-username fuse

4) Create a mountpoint and give yourself ownership
sudo mkdir /media/mount-name
sudo chown your-username /media/mount-name

5) Mount the filesystem
sshfs remote-system-name:/remote-folder /media/mount-name

6) Unmount the filesystem
fusermount -u /media/mount-name

Directions taken from http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/10/28/how-to-mount-a-remote-ssh-filesystem-using-sshfs/ More info on sshfs is available at http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

I've run into a strange problem on two Kubuntu machines where, after using sshfs, you're unable to unlock your own computer. Logging in works fine, but you can't return from a password-protected screensaver. My solution was to start a new session, change my password, then return to the old session and use the new password to unlock it.

cdean

January 3rd, 2006, 12:34 AM

[cdean@frog ~]$ sshfs 192.168.1.3: linuxbox
cdean@192.168.1.3's password:
fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied

I'm getting that error after following the HOWTO...

Gandalf

January 3rd, 2006, 10:30 AM

isn't NFS far more better? i use NFS to connect any linux laptop to my external HDD and windows clients use samba, everything is extremely fast and just amasing

Drain

January 3rd, 2006, 04:09 PM

isn't NFS far more better? i use NFS to connect any linux laptop to my external HDD and windows clients use samba, everything is extremely fast and just amasing

I think that the security of the encrypted connection that SSH provides is the major advantage here. Also, on a local network, NFS and Samba are just fine (they'd be presumably blocked behind a firewall?), but if you want to have access to those shared directories from an "outside" network, you can just re-use the SSH port.

Gandalf

January 3rd, 2006, 04:35 PM

I think that the security of the encrypted connection that SSH provides is the major advantage here. Also, on a local network, NFS and Samba are just fine (they'd be presumably blocked behind a firewall?), but if you want to have access to those shared directories from an "outside" network, you can just re-use the SSH port.
yes actually i have a firewall and i don't allow access to prtmap/nfs ports, anyway my ssh port is not the default how to make it use another port then 22?

freelsjd

January 4th, 2006, 03:46 AM

I did this and it worked fine. However, how can I verify the mount (other than using it)? In other words, the "df" command does not show the sshfs mounted drive. How to view the mount ?

GrammatonCleric

January 4th, 2006, 09:33 AM

yes actually i have a firewall and i don't allow access to prtmap/nfs ports, anyway my ssh port is not the default how to make it use another port then 22?

With sshfs -p option.

- GC

Chris Tucker

January 4th, 2006, 01:52 PM

[cdean@frog ~]$ sshfs 192.168.1.3: linuxbox
cdean@192.168.1.3's password:
fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied

I'm getting that error after following the HOWTO...

Well perhaps reading the instructions might help..
5) Mount the filesystem
sshfs remote-system-name:/remote-folder /media/mount-name

ie: home folder on remote system, and /media/dot3home .. just persay..
sshfs 192.168.1.3:/home/cdean /media/dot3home

GrammatonCleric

January 4th, 2006, 02:20 PM

floyd27

January 5th, 2006, 12:05 AM

thanx for the guide..:)

freelsjd

January 5th, 2006, 12:44 AM

I did this and it worked fine. However, how can I verify the mount (other than using it)? In other words, the "df" command does not show the sshfs mounted drive. How to view the mount ?

try a last time: anyone know the answer to this question ? I did see that a "ps aux" shows the repeat of the command, but that is it so far...

sciurus

January 5th, 2006, 03:46 AM

I believed that fusemount is installed so root only and execute it

This will not be the case if you follow step 3.

3) Add yourself to the 'fuse' group, then log out and log in again.
sudo adduser your-username fuse

sciurus

January 5th, 2006, 03:55 AM

I did this and it worked fine. However, how can I verify the mount (other than using it)? In other words, the "df" command does not show the sshfs mounted drive. How to view the mount ?

I'm not at my system to check, but I would expect an entry in /etc/mtab. df is known (http://tips.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/11/11/176206&tid=100)not to work: "Certain command-line tools (such as df) do not work properly due to shortcomings in the OpenSSH implementation of sftp. To work around these holes, sshfs has to estimate disk usage and free space, which could complicate its usage for some tasks."

nehalem

January 5th, 2006, 07:47 AM

This kind of a solution is sooo much better than KDE and Gnomes vfs stuff. Can't wait till the desktops just use this.

GrammatonCleric

January 5th, 2006, 11:38 AM

This will not be the case if you follow step 3.

3) Add yourself to the 'fuse' group, then log out and log in again.
sudo adduser your-username fuse

And if you read cdean's comments he stated that he "DID" following the instructions. So if this infact was the case and it still did not allow him to execute fusemount my post would fix the problem.

- GC

Chris Tucker

January 5th, 2006, 04:16 PM

heh.. just got to thinking.. any way to get windows XP or older to login to a ssh server like this and mount a remote folder and such? would be great, seeing as how i have wifi here and samba is a little insecure.. i could use samba for the read-only side and should i ever be in windows and need to upload something, instead of messing with SCP, just find a mounted drive?

nehalem

January 6th, 2006, 05:48 PM

sciurus

January 6th, 2006, 10:01 PM

And if you read cdean's comments he stated that he "DID" following the instructions. So if this infact was the case and it still did not allow him to execute fusemount my post would fix the problem.

He could have missed a step, misstyped something, forgotten to reboot, etc. I know I make little mistakes all the time. If he followed the directions, and as a member of the fuse group he cannot execute a file which is -rwsr-xr-- 1 root fuse then there is a problem with his sytem that shouldn't be glossed over.

sciurus

January 6th, 2006, 10:13 PM

When I try and move a file to my fuse mounted folder it says the following:
mv: failed to preserve ownership for `/media/prod_server/DownArrow.png': Permission denied
Is this like NFS and you have to have the same user ID stuff set up?

No, sshfs is just like normal ssh, you only need an account on the remote machine. If you look in /etc/mtab when you have a sshfs filesystem mounted you should see a line like

sshfs#bob@192.168.1.10:/home/bob /home/jane/sshfs fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,max_read=65536,user=jane 0 0

In this example, jane is connected as bob to his home directory on another machine. All files owned by bob will appear to be owned by jane. I'm not sure why you received that error.

jmeadows111

January 7th, 2006, 03:08 AM

Great howto -- works like a charm!

Thanks very much; it was just what I was looking for! :smile:

David Olivier

January 7th, 2006, 06:13 PM

I did this and it worked fine. However, how can I verify the mount (other than using it)? In other words, the "df" command does not show the sshfs mounted drive. How to view the mount ?

I seem to remember that df did show the mounted drive! I'm not at work now, so I can't check it.

Perhaps I typed "df -a" or something. I seem to remember that "df" with no parameters showed a limited list. Or try "df /myMountPoint".

Another way to verify the mount: list the contents of the mountpoint! That works of course if the mounted disk is not empty.

piedamaro

January 7th, 2006, 06:16 PM

Nice tip, thanks.

ZylGadis

January 15th, 2006, 01:33 AM

"df -a" shows it, as does "cat /etc/mtab" :)

PMO6022

January 15th, 2006, 09:01 PM

I've followed the how-to, but am still having a problem. Any help is appreciated. I have ssh set up and working between my client (laptop) and server (desktop). I've installed sshfs and its dependencies. I've created a user-owned mountpoint on the client machine. I added fuse to /etc/modules, and
pmorris@ubuntu:~ $ lsmod | grep fuse
fuse 36748 0 confirms that the fuse module is loaded. However, when I issue the sshfs command, (sshfs 192.168.1.103:</path/to/share> </path/to/mountpoint>, I get the following error:
fusermount: failed to create device node: Operation not permitted
fusermount: fuse device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' first The only info I've been able to find regarding this error is to do a "sudo modprobe fuse", which is already loaded in my case. Any ideas?

GrammatonCleric

January 15th, 2006, 09:07 PM

192.168.1.103:</path/to/share> </path/to/mountpoint>, I get the following error:
fusermount: failed to create device node: Operation not permitted
fusermount: fuse device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' first The only info I've been able to find regarding this error is to do a "sudo modprobe fuse", which is already loaded in my case. Any ideas?

Have you logged off, or rebooted, and logged back in?

PMO6022

January 15th, 2006, 09:49 PM

Have you logged off, or rebooted, and logged back in?Yes, I've done that more than once. I also added myself to the "fuse" group.

Update:
Well, I got it working. I changed the group of /dev/fuse from root to fuse, and reinstalled sshfs, and fuse-utils, and it's working now. I don't know exactly what was wrong, but it's working now.

kaamos

February 19th, 2006, 06:09 PM

jonny

March 9th, 2006, 01:51 AM

I too was tearing my hair out with the
fusermount: mount failed: Operation not permittederror message. I found the answer on the fuse website itself - I needed this command:
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/fusermountOddly enough only one of my several ubuntu boxes was affected, and reinstalling the packages didn't help at all. Odd.

i3dmaster

March 9th, 2006, 07:50 AM

Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
sshfs#yj@ubuntu:/home/yj/
976563 0 976563 0% /mnt/remote_home

cat /etc/mtab:
sshfs#yj@ubuntu:/home/yj/ /mnt/remote_home fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,max_read=65536 0 0

sudo ls -lad /mnt/remote_home:
drwxr-xr-x 1 yj users 6328 2006-03-08 17:49 /mnt/remote_home

id:
uid=1000(yj) gid=114(fuse) groups=4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),25(floppy),29( audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),106(lpadmin), 107(scanner),108(admin),114(fuse),1000(yj)

BUT:
cd /mnt/remote_home:
bash: cd: /mnt/remote_home: Permission denied

WHY?

danpre

April 2nd, 2006, 06:53 PM

sshfs has the advantage over a KIOslave or GnomeVFS that any program can use it. For instance, in Kubuntu Amarok wasn't able to play my remote music through fish:/ but worked fine using sshfs.
sshfs remote-system-name:/remote-folder /media/mount-name

Hi, great HOWTO

is it possible to add to line:

sshfs usre_name@remote-system-name:/remote-folder /media/mount-name

password?

I woluld like to add this line to KDE start, so I will have share mounted every time a start a computer

Chris Tucker

April 25th, 2006, 09:07 PM

Wow... thats all i can say after doing this myself.. i had a couple of folders totalling a few hundred pictures, on a different computer in the house, that i needed on my laptop... i had been looking for a reason to use sshfs, and i figured SCP would be a bit too long of a command to get all my files from there to here.... and Damn! its fast! even thumbnailing pictures that are 1mb each, over 54mbps wireless, .. it was the same as if the pictures were on this harddrive already!

My opinion: A HELL of a replacement to samba!. samba is incredibly slow compared to this
next thing for me to try is whatever nfs is... hmmm...

sal

May 7th, 2006, 10:12 PM

i have followed all the steps in the hoiwto but i keep getting this message:
remote host has disconnected

do i have to add the share on my remote system?

any help thanks.

jamesrw

May 9th, 2006, 02:04 AM

thnx! sshfs, why didnt I know before?

Pausanias

May 9th, 2006, 07:47 AM

i have followed all the steps in the hoiwto but i keep getting this message:
remote host has disconnected

do i have to add the share on my remote system?

any help thanks.

I see you are using dapper. So am I. I used sshfs without problems in breezy but now it doesn't work in dapper.

As far as I can tell it's a problem with the kernel used with dapper. It seems the author of sshfs needs to update the software to deal with this issue. Quite a bummer, as I'm quite used to sshfs by now.

Someone else reported the same problem here and could only resolve it by downgrading the kernel:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=10123569&forum_id=47044

Pausanias

May 10th, 2006, 07:15 PM

Someone else reported the same problem here and could only resolve it by downgrading the kernel:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=10123569&forum_id=47044

OK, user stupidity (mine) was at fault here. Apparently the disconnected message happens whenever the named host is nonexistent or unreachable. It should really say "host not found," but it says disconnected instead. So if you get that error message, make sure you are able to ssh in to the host exactly as it's being passed to sshfs.

dmizer

May 28th, 2006, 05:37 AM

Thanks, it worked!

The only problem is that nautilus thinks that the ssh shares have 0kb free space, so I can't create new files. I can edit the old ones just fine though.. Does anyone have any ideas what could be done about this?
i also show 0 free space when mounting this way. i cannot create new files because my client thinks there is no freespace.

i am able to mount this way, and i am able to view the shares. it just shows 0 free space.

dmizer

May 28th, 2006, 05:44 AM

found it. according to this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=174691&highlight=fuse+free

this is a "glitch" in the sshfs and file transfer can be done by the cli only.

reinibaerli

October 12th, 2006, 03:20 PM

I am using edgy and installed sshfs according to post #1 and I got an error, too:

fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied
So my solution was to

sudo chgrp fuse /dev/fuse
and it worked.

Can it be that this is a bug in the installation that should be reported?

Thanks,
Reinhard

jetpeach

October 31st, 2006, 02:01 AM

anybody know how to get write access to a share? i tried adding to the sshfs command "-o uid=1000" where 1000 is my user id. it changed the user id of the folders in the mount to mine, but i still can't write to the directories :(

Tomy

November 18th, 2006, 08:31 AM

From jonny's post #28

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/fusermount

Thanks, this solved my problems.

I am using Ubuntu Edgy and could only mount as root and had to access files from the CLI. Now things appear to work properly and I can mount as a user and use Nautilus.

nybbler

November 29th, 2006, 09:24 PM

[cdean@frog ~]$ sshfs 192.168.1.3: linuxbox
cdean@192.168.1.3's password:
fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied

I'm getting that error after following the HOWTO...

I think you missed the bit about logging back out and back in. You've added yourself to the fuse group with:

3) Add yourself to the 'fuse' group, then log out and log in again.
sudo adduser your-username fuse

If you don't logout and back in then your session doesn't pick up the fuser group. I was too lazy to log out so I just did:

su - my-username

It asked for my password, and hey presto a new session with the new groups. Just type 'groups' to see what groups your session has.

gleenn

January 1st, 2007, 03:59 AM

If you are still getting permission errors, make sure you log out and back in again for the group permissions to be re-evaluated. Otherwise you will have added yourself to the fuse group but not seen the effect.

--G

jtc

January 10th, 2007, 12:39 PM

I've pretty much gotten ssfhs working the way I want.

I works perfectly for file-operations, playing multimedia, etc etc.

Today when I was working in Kword I noticed something disturbing thought. The first time I save my dokument it saves perfectly, but when I continues to save the updated dokument (same filename) nothing happens. It is still the orginal file from the first save with the same timestamp and content.

Something is registred thought, because at the moment of saving the filname~ (backupfile) is created. No matter how many save I do it is still just a backup of the orginal save.

When I try to reproduce the same problem in OpenOffice-writer and Emacs the saving behaves as it should. They continue to save new content, just as they should.

Anyone who has any idéa why Kword and sshfs don't get along?

Below follow the sshfs-mount in question.

sshfs#mauddib:/home/andreas/Documents on /home/andreas/Documents type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,max_read=65536,user=andreas)

jtc

January 11th, 2007, 11:54 AM

Well, I found the solution to the problem with sshfs and koffice, mentioned above.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126846
(Additional Comment #5)

In short, you want to use: -o workaround=rename

qgfreire

January 15th, 2007, 01:31 PM

Thanks, it seems Edgy have this problem!
](*,)

motin

January 24th, 2007, 05:31 PM

isn't NFS far more better? i use NFS to connect any linux laptop to my external HDD and windows clients use samba, everything is extremely fast and just amasing

To quote http://linux.inet.hr/sshfs_secure_and_transparent_access_to_remote_file systems.html:

While sshfs may not be as fast and featureful as other full-blown network filesystems such as NFS or Samba, it still has some great features:

* very easy to use, on the server side there's nothing to do, on the client side mounting the filesystem is as easy as logging into the server with ssh
* provides secure (encrypted) access to remote files
* has decent performance (multithreaded, caching directory contents and allowing large reads)
* should work well even over slow and/or unstable links (think dialup), knows how to reconnect to the server when the connection is broken

A matter of taste and what suits one's needs really.

Btw - here is a similar thread that goes a bit further: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=324254

motin

January 24th, 2007, 05:37 PM

I love sshfs and the fact that the use of it in conjunction with nautilus blows away all other FTP programs available for the Linux and Windows Desktops. Working on webprojects today is much leaner and efficent - not to say more good looking!

noahspurrier

February 28th, 2007, 03:43 AM

To get around this error:
glib-2.0fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied
I needed to do this chmod two files:
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount
$ sudo chmod a+rw /dev/fuse
I tried putting my user in the 'fuse' group and logging back in, but that didn't help.

Yours,
Noah

penvzila

May 2nd, 2007, 04:02 AM

What if my username on the server I'm trying to log in to is different than my account name in Ubuntu? I don't see any way for sshfs to handle that.

penvzila

May 2nd, 2007, 04:06 AM

Gah nevermined. It was a typo.

dsauxier

December 5th, 2007, 08:37 PM

FYI, it seems that the location of fusermount has changed as of Gutsy Gibbon (7.10)
It's now in /bin/fusermount instead of /usr/bin/fusermount

qpieus

January 5th, 2008, 04:58 PM

What if my username on the server I'm trying to log in to is different than my account name in Ubuntu? I don't see any way for sshfs to handle that.

You just put your remote username and @ before the remote machine address, like so:
sshfs username@remote-system-name:/remote-folder /media/mount-name

darck

March 10th, 2008, 05:28 PM

how to make it other way - mount local folder on remote ssh server.
my computer client's fodler mount to ssh server
?

OfMacandMen

April 5th, 2008, 02:33 PM

I had the same problem and this is what I did to fix it!

#add user to fuse
adduser user fuse

Then this part is what took me the longest to figure out.

LOGOFF!!

Yep after four hours it dawned on me that maybe in order to reset my group setting I may have to logoff!!

Work great!

misoul

October 8th, 2008, 02:40 PM

I'm compiling fuse for developing. The source was retrieved by apt-get and was compiled naively with no additional option. This is what I got when trying the example in fuse code:

fusermount: mount failed: Operation not permitted

I've looked at all the suggestions in previous threads and I'm sure that there's nothing wrong with my setup. After banging my head on the wall and lots of hair pulling, this is what I've found:

- The binaries in fuse example link against libfuse.so in my compilation, which turns out to be the problem.
- To validate this, I wrote a small program using fuse. Linking against the libfuse.so provided by Ubuntu works just fine, but linking against the one I compiled poses "Operation not permitted".

I thought I missed some option during configure, but it turns out not very likely. So I think Ubuntu is doing something funky here.

And btw, this is Ubuntu Hardy and fuse-2.7.2. I hope this can save some of us lots of frustrating hours.

Cheers.

lwhitmore

October 22nd, 2008, 12:52 AM

When I first started to use sshfs a couple of months ago, I found that copying files and browsing directories would cause my system to hang ... only for a couple of seconds - but it was enough to make the system cumbersome.

Adding the following parameters to the standard 'sshfs' command, made my connection run MUCH faster.. ymmv, but I thought I'd pass on the tip.

-o ServerAliveInterval=15 -o cache_timeout=600

physeetcosmo

March 30th, 2009, 06:01 PM

I believed that fusemount is installed so root only and execute it try the following.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount

- GC

All,

I was having the same problem until I used an option with sshfs:

$ sudo sshfs -o allow_other <SERVER_SSH_USERNAME>@<SERVER_EXTERNAL_IP>:/<SHARED_DIRECTORY_ON_SERVER> /<WHERE_TO_MOUNT_ON_CLIENT>

The -o allow_other will allow any user on the local client to open the folder. Remember that the read/write is done on the Server side not on the client side. But the access to the SSH pipe is determined on the client side. Thus this option is allowing any user to access the ssh pipe!

Ahhhh, encryption!! :)

Nausser

December 16th, 2010, 04:25 PM

I followed the instructions in the initial post with perfect success! Thank you!

Jack Waugh

March 20th, 2011, 02:44 AM

withdrawn

masuch

September 6th, 2011, 05:28 PM