SSHFS and FUSE To Mount Remote Network Resources
UPDATE (2014.04.09): I may have been premature with the startup script mentioned below. This doesn’t seem to work. I am assuming the failure is because my profile isn’t loaded at the time the script is run or my account isn’t allowed to to run scripts using @reboot in a cron config. Whatever the case, I have found a configuration that works. I put the startup script call in my ~/.bashrc file and it works as intended. Here’s the line I added after my environmental declarations (near the bottom):
~/startup.sh
Everything else worked pretty well. I am getting the following message when I open a terminal and I will need to do more research as to how to resolve this:
fuse: mountpoint is not empty fuse: if you are sure this is safe, use the 'nonempty' mount option
</UPDATE> At work, I have a network homedrive for my Linux systems that I only have access 
to once logged into one of my systems. Once I am in one system, it’s easy for me to move scripts and files around but I have always struggled with the overt disconnection between my local workstation andy my network. My requirements were straightforward: Easy to configure locally, no network/remote configuration required, maintains solid security, and scriptable. Today, I made a push to get some level of resolution to this issue and I was finally successful using sshfs and FUSE. While not strictly work related, this will be a huge improvement for my BeagleBone Black projects as well. It was much easier than I thought it would be. Let’s say I want to mount the remote home drive from my BeagleBone (hostname: ‘trisket’, user: ‘dave’). NOTE: These instructions assume Ubuntu, but I’m sure the process is the same for other distros
1. Install (if it’s not already installed) ‘sshfs’ on my client
sudo apt-get install sshfs
2. Verify that my user account is in the fuse group.
groups dave
which returns:
dave adm dialout cdrom sudo dip plugdev fuse lpadmin sambashare
If not, add user:
sudo adduser dave fuse
3. Verify ownership of /dev/fuse and make sure it’s root:fuse. This is important!
ls -la /dev/fuse
yielded:
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 229 Apr 3 09:12 /dev/fuse
I fixed this with:
sudo chown root:fuse /dev/fuse
4. Create a mount point: (I wanted this in my home folder)
mkdir ~/bbb
5: Mount the remote resource: sshfs remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/resource /local/resource
sshfs dave@trisket:/home/dave ~/bbb
Success! Now I have the remote BBB home folder mounted on my local workstation. This worked amazingly well and it was very easy to to add others. In retrospect, I think I will centralize the mount points that I bind to much like the mount folder. I am keeping these separate from /media or /mnt for my own sanity. Finally, a quick word on persistence. After I mounted the drive, I logged out and back in and the mount was still there. However, after a reboot, it disappeared. So, as I have mentioned in previous posts for my BeagleBone Black initial configuration, I created a startup script that runs on reboot. There’s lots of ways to do this but this is my method which helps me keep everything organized and within scope. First I added the mount line to my ~/startup.sh script:
#! /bin/bash ~/getIP.py ~/updateGateway.sh sshfs dave@trisket:/home/dave ~/bbb
Because I have this already to run on reboot/startup, I don’t have to do anything else. However, if you are setting this up for the first time, you can have the cron service run this file for you. I have other posts that go into more detail but you can simply add one entry in your crontab to get this done:
crontab -e
then add the following line:
@reboot /home/dave/startup.sh
Just make sure you change the path to where your startup.sh script is saved. Also, don’t forget to make your startup script executable:
chmod +x startup.sh
Overall, this was a very easy feature add to my local client configuration and the value is huge, especially at work. I hope this helps someone and if you have any questions, feel free to post comments.
