MOUNT_PSSHFS(8) BSD 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
credentials 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:
-c nconnect
Opens nconnect connections to the server. Currently, the value has to be 1 or 2. If 2 is specified, a second connection is opened for
the reading and writing of data, while directory operations are performed on their own connection. This can greatly increase directory
operation performance (ls, mkdir, etc.) if mount_psshfs completely saturates the available bandwidth by doing bulk data copying. The
default is 1.
-e Makes the mounted file system NFS exportable. If this option is used, it is very important to understand that mount_psshfs can not pro-
vide complete support for NFS due to the limitations in the backend. 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.
-g manglegid
Converts remote manglegid to the effective gid of the file server and vice versa. See -u.
-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-band-
width 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 any-
thing has changed on the server. This option is used to adjust the timeout period to timeout seconds. A value of 0 means the cache is
never valid; -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).
-u mangleuid
Converts remote mangleuid to the effective uid of the file server and vice versa. This is a simple special case of the functionality of
mount_umap(8). For example: you mount remote me@darkmoon as the local user "me". If the uid of "me" on the local system is 101 and on
darkmoon it is 202, you would use -u 202 to see files owned by 202 on darkmoon as owned by 101 when browsing the mount point. Apart
from the cosmetic effect, this makes things like "chown me file" work. See -g.
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. It was inspired by FUSE sshfs.
CAVEATS
Permissions are not handled. Do not expect the file system to behave except for a single user.
Depending on if the server supports the sftp(1) stavfs protocol extension, free disk space may be displayed for the mount by df(1). This
information reflects the status at the server's mountpoint and may differ for subdiretories under the mount root.
BSD
January 7, 2010 BSD