The SSH File System for MacFUSE

NB: You can get a precompiled sshfs binary for your platform from the MacFUSE subversion tree (these require MacFUSE 2.0 or above.)

sshfs-static-leopard.gz

sshfs-static-tiger.gz

Alternatively, here's how you can acquire these binaries using the svn command. (The command sequence shown will leave the binaries in a folder called sshfs-binaries on your Desktop.)

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ svn co http://macfuse.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/filesystems/sshfs/binary sshfs-binaries

These binaries, called sshfs-static-leopard (etc.), are statically linked against glib but dynamically linked against libfuse. If you wish to quickly try out sshfs, you can just install the MacFUSE Core package and use the precompiled statically linked binaries without having to compile anything. You can rename them to sshfs if you so prefer.

NB: If you are running an older version of sshfs, please be sure to upgrade to the latest version available. The latest source patch for sshfs is available in the filesystems/sshfs/ directory of the MacFUSE source tree. Newer versions might have important and useful updates.

Using the Command Line sshfs Program

To use the command line sshfs program, you can do something like:

# Mounting the SSH file system
$ mkdir /some/mount/point # or use one that already exists
$ sshfs user@host:/some/directory /some/mount/point -oauto_cache,reconnect,volname=<volname>

<volname> should be a string you wish to use as the name of the newly mounted volume. If everything went fine, you should see the volume on your Desktop and in the Finder (unless you have disabled remote volumes from showing up in these places).

Once you are done using sshfs, you can unmount the volume either using the eject icon in the Finder or other common user-interface means of ejecting. Alternatively, you can do the following from the command line:

$ umount /some/mount/point

Changelog

sshfs(MacFUSE) 2.2.0 (October 22, 2008)

• Numerous bugfixes. See ChangeLog file in sshfs source for details.
• The GUI wrapper to sshfs (the sshfs.app application) is no longer available in precompiled form. It source is still available, of course.

sshfs(MacFUSE) 0.3.0 (May 7, 2007)

• No changes to the user interface, which remains, and will remain, an unsupported demo GUI wrapper.
• Fix for an sshfs crash that could occur when doing heavy I/O to a single file (such as while creating a large tarball or running mkfile).
• Fix for an sshfs crash that could occur when doing heavy directory I/O in a heavily populated directory hierarchy (such as running multiple find commands on an sshfs volume, possibly in conjunction with some file reads).
• Increased the timeout for the "daemon not responding" alert panel to 20 seconds from 10 seconds. On a slow link, 10 seconds wasn't enough with some heavily populated directory hierarchies. Of course, even 20 seconds may not be enough, but you can always use the daemon_timeout mount-time option.
• User and group ID mapping is now turned on by default. This means that user/group IDs of the user logging in to the remote (SSH) machine will be automatically translated to the user/group IDs of the local user.

sshfs(MacFUSE) 0.2.0 (April 19, 2007)

• Alert panel shown upon daemon timeout, giving the user the option to eject the sshfs volume.
• Fixes for some "hangs" that users could experience under certain circumstances (such as saving a document in Microsoft Word).
• TCP_NODELAY supported (and enabled by default) through the sshnodelay.so dynamic library that's preloaded into sshfs. This library is looked for in the same location as sshfs-static, in /usr/local/lib/, and in the current directory (in that order). If sshnodelay.so is not found, TCP_NODELAY is not enabled.
• Fix for issue with pathname caching at the sshfs user daemon level. This could cause strange behavior after certain sequences of file system operations.
• ping_diskarb is enabled by default in MacFUSE 0.2.5. If you don't want this option for some reason, you can turn it off through the noping_diskarb option.
• The sshfs option workaround=rename is now enabled by default.
• If the kill_on_unmount option (new in MacFUSE 0.2.5) is specified, the kernel will explicitly try to kill the sshfs daemon after the volume has been unmounted. This is to avoid the issue of the daemon "hanging around" even after a successful unmount.
• Upon launching the application from its containing disk image, the user is given the option of copying the application to the Applications folder.

sshfs(MacFUSE) 0.1.0 (January 2007)

• Initial binary release.