How To Mount Folder or Filesystem Over SSh

Many times you need to interact a lot with some directory or a filesystem while working remotely on a server over SSh. Things will be way easier if you can mount the remote folder or filesystem over SSh and I am going to show how to do this thing in this very post.

SSHFS (Secure SHell FileSystem) is 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. On the local computer where the SSHFS is mounted, the implementation makes use of the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) kernel module. The practical effect of this is that the end user can seamlessly interact with remote files being securely served over SSH just as if they were local files on his/her computer. On the remote computer the SFTP subsystem of SSH is used.

SSHFS can be downloaded and installed from HERE. Most linux distros have sshfs in their repositories. You can use the respective package managers to install the sshfs in the client system(i.e. your system).

Ubuntu and debian users can type the following in the terminal to install sshfs:

samar@Techgaun:~$ sudo apt-get install sshfs

Once you install sshfs, you are ready to mount the remote files and folders over SSh. The syntax for mounting the remote filesystem/folder is pretty straightforward.
The syntax is: sshfs -p SSHPort [user@]host:[dir] mountpoint

An example of mounting the remote system's /opt directory in my Desktop

samar@Techgaun:~$ sshfs -p 222 kubh@192.168.0.1:/opt/ ~/Desktop/remote/

Unmounting can be done by using the command as below:

samar@Techgaun:~$ fusermount -u ~/Desktop/remote/

I hope this counts as a useful tips for you. :)