How to Mount a Remote Folder using SSH on Ubuntu
Connecting to a server across the internet is much more secure using SSH. There is a way that you can mount a folder on a remove server using the SSHFS service.
There are quite a few steps that you’ll have to follow, so get ready and open a terminal window.
First we’ll install the module:
sudo apt-get install sshfs
Now we will use the modprobe command to load it
sudo modprobe fuse
We’ll need to set up some permissions in order to access the utilities. Replace <username> with your username.
sudo adduser <username> fuse
sudo chown root:fuse /dev/fuse
sudo chmod +x /dev/fusermount
Since we’ve added ourselves to a user group, we need to logout and back in at this point before we continue.
Now we’ll create a directory to mount the remote folder in. I chose to create it in my home directory and call it remoteserv.
mkdir ~/remoteserv
Now we have the command to actually mount it. You’ll be prompted to save the server key and for your remote password.
sshfs <username>@<ipaddress>:/remotepath ~/remoteserv
Now you should be able to cd into the directory and start using it as if it was local.
geek@ubuntuServ:~/remoteserv$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 1 951247 155725 4096 2006-12-13 13:30 howtogeek.com
drwxr-sr-x 1 root root 4096 2006-09-11 06:45 logs
drwx—— 1 951247 155725 4096 2006-08-11 16:09 Maildir
drwxrwxr-x 1 951247 155725 4096 2006-10-29 02:34 scripts
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What’s the point of prefacing the commands with sudo? I’m not sure I understand that.
sudo chmod +x /dev/fusermount
i think the line above was supposed to be this.
sudo chmod +x /dev/fuse
Thanks for the usefull Ubuntu Linux how to’s
sudo allows you to execute something in the context of the root user, and is usually used when performing system administration tasks.
It should be noted that the mount point must be within a folder that your user owns. so ~/remotesrv (or anything within your home folder ~) will do fine.
I usually like to put all my mountpoints in /mnt, just ’cause I like having them all together; but with this method that will not work because you do not own /mnt (root does).
Also, when you run the sshfs command, be sure to NOT use sudo; otherwise you’ll be mounting the filesystem as root; at which point you would not be allowed to access it, because you are not root.
Thanks for the tutorial. I wanted to try mounting through SSH rather than SAMBA for convenience sake on one of my new Ubuntu servers; and this did the trick. Cheers.
Robbie,
Thanks for the commments… I’m glad it helped!
I decided a while ago to switch to all secure connections, no more ftp, which is what prompted this article.
I had one problem with this HOW-TO. When I executed :
sudo chmod +x /dev/fusermount
said that /dev/fusermount didn’t exist, but the fusermount file is in /usr/bin, so I executed :
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount
and it works fine now.
This worked great for me and it opens up all sorts of possibilities. Could someone suggest the best settings to auto-mount in fstab?
I don’t think you want to use the fstab.
I would suggest using rc.local to run the sshfs command.
Be aware that you will be placing your username and password in plain text in your rc.local file. You may want to add some ssh certificates to prevent the need for a password.
Couldn’t get it to work at all..
fusermount: failed to open /dev/fuse: Permission denied
This is great… I now have practically direct access to my files on my school account without going into the lab. Thanks! Linux blows my mind once again…
@Mark:
“I don’t think you want to use the fstab.
I would suggest using rc.local to run the sshfs command.”
could you please explain how to do that?
thanks,
/el
thanks for the great tutorial … not using ubuntu … but it worked with modification here …
Is there a way of mounting SSHFS within windows that anyone knows about ???
cheers
JD
Totally sweet. Works like a charm, and the really neat thing is that the computer acting as server only needs SSH … Wonderful. Thanks for the tutorial.
Rob:
> Couldn’t get it to work at all..
>
> fusermount: failed to open /dev/fuse: Permission denied
See the second comment, by Mike. Do that, and I think you’ll be fine.
shonds great, i’ll try this on fedora, mabe even for my home dir…
thanks@The Geek :0
You can use sftp to mount ftp-drives in windows.
It works. But How to unmount?
Works fine, but I think there a little mistake.
sudo chmod +wx /dev/fuse ?
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount ?
I installed it on Fedora 7. Required me only the following steps.
#yum install sshfs
#modprobe fuse
#sshfs -o allow_other @:/remotepath ~/remoteserv
I did su before installing because I cannot sudo
This works like a charm for me
in my previons comment please read the line
#sshfs -o allow_other @:/remotepath ~/remoteserv
as
#sshfs -o allow_other username@ipaddress:/remotepath ~/remoteserv
All:
The line:
sudo chmod +x /dev/fusermount
should probably be
sudo chmod +x /dev/fuse
and NOT:
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount
as some others have suggested. The latter suggestion is meaningless, since /usr/bin/fusermount is already executable by default, and the command makes the file “fusermount” executable, which it already is. Furthermore the prior command is to do with setting up /dev/fuse so it makes perfect sense that the chmod is a continuation of this. BTW, with the above correction, this howto works fine for me.
To unmount, use:
fusermount -u /path/to/local/mountpoint
You would’ve seen this had you read the manual, using:
man sshfs
Thanks for this.
Actually, on my Ubuntu 8.04 system I found that sshfs was already installed, and the fuse module was already loaded (and I don’t have NTFS partitions?!). Even the group membership was already properly configured!
Nonetheless, a useful walk-through!
This is incredibly useful for someone that works on multiple linux servers. Ideally though, I’d like to lock the folder, preferably with a gksu type login, although since it’s set to be under my own user, it wouldn’t work quite like that.
I’m also wondering if i have this mounted in an area that is indexed, will I be able to search within the mounted folders with my own machine?
Linux … never sieze to amaze you!
My boss is so happy cause I use this helpful sshfs to cut down time for transfering from an old server to newone!
Thanks a lot!
Ah, this is very useful.
I’ve been using KDE’s fish:// protocol to achieve the same result, which is really excellent, but was causing me a few problems — I needed to use SVN in the remote folders, and I wanted to use KDE’s other wonderful plugin, kdesvn, but you can’t combine kdesvn with fish.
The good news is that I can combine kdesvn with sshfs, so thanks to this article I can now manage my SVN area. Yay!