mount_psshfs(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

MOUNT_PSSHFS(8)         NetBSD System Manager's Manual         MOUNT_PSSHFS(8)


NAME

     mount_psshfs -- sshfs implementation for puffs


SYNOPSIS

     mount_psshfs [options] user@host[:path] mount_point


DESCRIPTION

     The mount_psshfs utility can be used to mount a file system using the ssh
     sftp subprotocol, making a remote directory hierarchy appear in the local
     directory tree.  This functionality is commonly known as sshfs.

     The mandatory parameters are the target host name and local mount point.
     The target host parameter can optionally contain a username whose creden-
     tials will be used by the remote sshd, and a relative or absolute path
     for the remote mount point's root.  If no user is given, the credentials
     of the user issuing the mount command are used.  If no path is given, the
     user's home directory on the remote machine will be used.

     The following command line options are available:

     -e   Makes the mounted file system NFS exportable.  If this option is
          used, it is very important to understand that mount_psshfs can not
          provide complete support for NFS due to the limitations in the back-
          end.  Files are valid only for the time that mount_psshfs is running
          and in the event of e.g. a server crash, all client retries to
          access files will fail.

     -F configfile
          Pass a configuration file to ssh(1).  This will make it ignore the
          system-wide /etc/ssh/ssh_config configuration file and use
          configfile instead of ~/.ssh/config.

     -o [no]option
          This flag can be used to give standard mount options and options to
          puffs.

     -O sshopt=value
          Pass an option to ssh(1), for example -O Port=22.  For a list of
          valid options, see ssh_config(5).

     -p   Preserve connection.  This option makes mount_psshfs to try to
          reconnect to the server if the connection fails.  The option is very
          experimental and does not preserve open files or retry current
          requests and should generally only be used if the trade-offs are
          well understood.

     -r max_reads
          Limits maximum outstanding read requests for each node to max_reads.
          This can be used to improve interactive performance on low-bandwidth
          links when also performing bulk data reads.

     -s   This flag can be used to make the program stay on top.  The default
          is to detach from the terminal and run in the background.

     -t timeout
          By default mount_psshfs caches directory contents and node
          attributes for 30 seconds before re-fetching from the server to
          check if anything has changed on the server.  This option is used to
          adjust the timeout period to timeout seconds.  A value 0 means the
          cache is never valid and -1 means it is valid indefinitely.  It is
          possible to force a re-read regardless of timeout status by sending
          SIGHUP to the mount_psshfs process.

          Note: the file system will still free nodes when requested by the
          kernel and will lose all cached information in doing so.  How fre-
          quently this happens depends on system activity and the total number
          of available vnodes in the system (kern.maxvnodes).


EXAMPLES

     The following example illustrates how to mount the directory /usr on
     server bigiron as user abc on local directory /mnt with ssh transport
     compression enabled:

           mount_psshfs -O Compression=yes abc@bigiron:/usr /mnt

     It is possible to use fstab(5) for psshfs mounts, with SSH public key
     authentication:

           abc@bigiron:/usr /mnt psshfs
           rw,noauto,-O=BatchMode=yes,-O=IdentityFile=/root/.ssh/id_rsa,-t=-1


SEE ALSO

     sftp(1), puffs(3), puffs(4), fstab(5), ssh_config(5), mount(8), sshd(8)


HISTORY

     The mount_psshfs utility first appeared in NetBSD 5.0.


CAVEATS

     Permissions are not handled.  Do not expect the file system to behave
     except for a single user.

NetBSD 5.1                     September 6, 2008                    NetBSD 5.1