Comments on: Autofs and sshfs – the perfect couple

By: Nick J

Nick J — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:41:12 +0000

in modern Ubuntu, it’s “aptitude install fuse-utils” (note the extra dash).

By: mount remote file systems via ssh « James Reid

mount remote file systems via ssh « James Reid — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:48:38 +0000

[...] Sources: Totally Seamless SSHFS under Linux using Fuse and Autofs — Autofs and sshfs – the perfect couple. [...]

By: autofs+sshfs "Directory not found"

autofs+sshfs "Directory not found" — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:40:33 +0000

[...] Hello all. Having some troubles with sshfs + autofs. Roughly following this guide here: http://www.tjansson.dk/?p=84 Here is /etc/auto.master: [...]

By: Sergey

Sergey — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:08:48 +0000

No, wait, There IS a way to launch sshfs with passworded keys via automount!
Look at http://pturing.firehead.org/software/autofs_sshfs
Method uses workaround sudo_ssh scripts, but it works!

By: Sergey

Sergey — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:22:58 +0000

Thanks for the article!
All things work in general, but setting up password-protected keys is a problem. Variables SSH_AGENT_PID and SSH_AUTH_SOCK should be set in sshfs’s environment. But it seems, that autofs launches mounter in clean env from root, so my personal ssh-agent is invisible for it. No ideas of how to connect them:) Maybe that ConsoleKit will help one day..

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:40:39 +0000

Great article; it has been very useful to me, thanks!

I’d like to mention that I added the sshfs option transform_symlinks to the options list. This transforms absolute symlinks in the mount to relative ones, so they still point to the same thing on the server.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:49:14 +0000

how on earth is it possible to mount with a passphrase?

passphraseless ssh keys are useless, I may as well store my password in plain text on the hard disk.

By: Thomas Jansson

Thomas Jansson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:10:13 +0000

The system is unaware that /mnt/autofs/foo is not a local filesystem. However the system will aware when mountet through gnome. This means the gnome will not try to create thumnails when using the built-in gnome SSH but will create thumbnails when using autofs.

By: Nitin DB

Nitin DB — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:07:25 +0000

I tried the above with success. However, I found browsing within the mounted sshfs folder to be painfully slow and often would lock-up if browsing a folder with plenty of files an images.

I’m now using Nautilus to create an sftp connection which seems much faster while browsing. What could be the reason for this?

Is sshfs with autofs much more dependent on bandwidth and net connection speed, than a plain sftp with Nautilus?

By: Thomas Jansson

Thomas Jansson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:14:00 +0000

I don’t think it is possible from within sshfs but I guess you could setup autofs on the gateway or host as well? Alternatively you need to create some SSH tunnels through the gateway.