How to mount a remote file system over ssh

The following post describes how to mount a remote file system over ssh on Mac OS X 10.9.2. With minor modifications, the same thing can be achieved on other platforms.

Background

I recently needed to manipulate a sqlite database on a virtual machine and my gui tool lacked the ability to tunnel over ssh.

Enter sshfs: Secure SHell FileSystem – a file system for Linux (and other operating systems with a FUSE implementation, such as Mac OS X or FreeBSD) capable of operating on files on a remote computer using just a secure shell login on the remote computer.

In the example below, I’m mounting a file system from a VirtualBox virtual machine controlled by vagrant (which happens to use port 2200 on the loopback address 127.0.0.1).

Prerequisites

• Mac OS X 10.9.2
• Homebrew

Installation

Install sshfs via Homebrew:

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$ brew install sshfs

Follow instructions for osxfuse (refer to brew info osxfuse):

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$ mount -t osxfusefs
$ sudo kextunload -b com.github.osxfuse.filesystems.osxfusefs
$ sudo /bin/cp -RfX /usr/local/Cellar/osxfuse/2.6.2/Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs /Library/Filesystems
$ sudo chmod +s /Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs/Support/load_osxfusefs

The remote file system is now mounted at /Volumes/mount_name and one can access files via Mac OS applications and/or the Finder.

Unmount

Close any open files and cd out of the mount_name directory before executing the following command to unmount the remote file system:

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$ umount /Volumes/mount_name

Summary

sshfs is a lightweight solution to efficiently mount a remote file system for local access.

Reference(s)

• SSH Filesystem