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File access via SSHFS

SSHFS is a way to mount a remote file system over ssh. Under the hood it talks to the ssh/sftp daemon on the server and sends commands to download or upload files when needed.

It is not a true network file system so you have to be careful not to change files on both sides of the connection simultaneously. It does not offer any protection against this, e.g., full or partial file locking. Modifying files directly on the server and on a mounted volume simultaneously will lead to unpredictable results.

On Linux, where it was first introduced, sshfs is a userspace file system. So one needs tp first install a piece of software called FUSE to support user space file systems, and then the software that provides sshfs. Implementations on other operating systems often follow a similar approach.

In Windows (and therefore CygWin)

SSHFS-Win

SSHFS-Win follows the same approach as the Linux implementation.

It first requires the installation of WinFsp or Windows File System Proxy, which has the same role as FUSE on Linux. It supports all recent Windows versions and supports several APIs for implementing user space file systems or port those from Linux.

After installing WinSfp, SSHFS-Win can be installed. Downloads are also available from the WinFsp download section or you can download from the sshfs-win GitHub.

There are also GUI front ends available to help with creating the connections and drive mappings. One is sshfs-win-manager which is a small project on GitHub. The other one is SiriKali which supports multiple operating systems and several user space file systems.

TODO: Check compatibility with keys.

Links

Dokan

Dokan (GitHub: dokan-dev) is a similar project to SSHFS-Win that offers a FUSE wrapper and several userspace file systems running on top of it. Installation is again done in two phases. At the time of writing, the dokan-sshfs component is without maintainer and the installation information is not nearly as good as for SSHFS-Win. Dokan used to be a popular implementation, but as it died it has been forked into Dokany and now seems to be dying again.

First the Dokany wrapper is installed following the installation instructions.

Next dokan-sshfs can be installed. At the time of writing there don't seem to be pre-built packages available.

Commercial implementations

This list by no means aims to be complete.

  • Mountain Duck is a package from the developers of CyberDuck that supports not only the sftp protocol (on which sshfs implementations are based) but also several cloud storage technologies, including S3. Contrary to CyberDuck it also allows to mount volumes and claims to use smart synchronization that also enables offline work. It supports both Windows and macOS.

  • NetDrive is a commercial package for Windows and macOS that does not only support SSHFS but can also mount several other types of cloud storage as if it is a local file system, including, e.g., S3. There is a personal version which is still relatively cheap, but the team version which is needed to offer full privacy also on multi-user PCs is rather expensive to academic standards.

  • ExpanDrive is a similar product that also supports several cloud storage solutions and supports not only Windows and macOS but even some Linux versions.

  • /n software SFTP Drive also supports Windows, macOS and Linux.

  • CloudMounter is another package enabling mounting from an sftp server, and it too supports some other cloud storage technologies. It also exists in a version for macOS.

In WSL

Note: We only tested with WSL 2.

As WSL will map all Windows drives into the Linux domain, one approach is to use a Windows client as discussed in the previous section that maps an sshfs volume onto a drive letter.

However, in WSL 2 it is also possible to install FUSE to use userspace file systems and then install and run the regular Linux sshfs client.

Note however that at the time of writing of this text (June 2023) the sshfs project is without maintainer, though there are some forks in which further development seems to be happening. If no new maintainer is found, it is rather likely that sshfs will be abandoned by Linux distributions as security bugs are no longer fixed.

openSUSE Leap 15.4

E.g., in the openSUSE LEAP 15.4 distribution, installing fuse and sshfs was as simple as

sudo zypper install sshfs

Once installed, a mount point should be created, e.g.,

mkdir -p /home/XXX/test_mount

and the remote volume can be linked, e.g.,

sshfs myuserid@myserver:/home/myuserid /home/XXX/test_mount -o follow_symlinks