Mounting a Remote Filesystem Using SSHFS

Mount to remote filesystem over SSH with sshfs

Installing SSHFS

On debian based distro.

sudo apt-get install sshfs

Mounting the Remote File System

Create a local directory in which to mount the remote file system.

sudo mkdir /mnt/name

Temporarily solution

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,reconnect user@ip_address:/ /mnt/name

Temporarily with ssh key authentication

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,reconnect,IdentityFile=/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa user@ip_address:/ /mnt/name/

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.

Unmount

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

sudo umount /mnt/name
sudo rmdir /mnt/name

Permanent solution

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

Add the following entry to the bottom of the file. (there is extra option for automount to work for systemd)

Links with sources:

https://man.archlinux.org/man/mount.8#FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT%5FMOUNT%5FOPTIONS

https://superuser.com/questions/669287/automount-sshfs-using-fstab-without-mount-a

user@ip_address:/  /mnt/name  fuse.sshfs  x-systemd.automount,noauto,_netdev,nouser,idmap=user,transform_symlinks,identityfile=/home/tedi/.ssh/id_rsa_jason,allow_other,uid=REMOTE_USER_ID,gid=REMOTE_GROUP_ID,sync,noatime,reconnect,rw 0 0

Save the changes and reboot.

Warning

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 remote. Therefore it is not recommended to setup permanent mounts on production servers.