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mount-remote-server-locally-on-macos.md

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Mount remote server locally on macOS

Using SSHFS to mount remote directories locally is quite useful. For instance, most of my work is done on a dedicated cluster and because it is a headless access (X-forwarding is very painful), it is often necessary to view results using native tools on my local machine.

On macOS, you need sshfs and osxfuse for this to work properly. What it does is that it creates a local directory (mount) that mirrors the content of the remote directory. The underlying data transfer and update is done behind-the-scenes using the regular SSH protocol.

For example, the command below will mount /lab/data from remote server (example) in your home directory (~/ssh_mnt). So if you access ~/ssh_mnt, you should see the contents of /lab/data as if that directory exists on your machine.

sshfs ~/ssh_mnt [email protected]:/lab/data

However, doing this every time when you log in or connection resets is painful. Here's what I did:

  • Setup synthetic.conf -- this will allow me to mount remote directories at root level in macOS Catalina(or higher, I presume). Currently, you cannot create directories or mount any filesystem in /.

    lab	/System/Volumes/Data/example/lab
home	/System/Volumes/Data/example/home

  • Re-claimed /home -- /home did not contain anything so I used it to mount /home of my remote server. Not recommended if you are not comfortable. For this, I commented the line from /etc/auto_master.

    # /home	auto_home  # blah

  • Create an Automator workflow to run sshfs command on login. For example:

    sudo sshfs -o reconnect,nodev,allow_other,noappledouble,defer_permissions,IdentityFile=<IDFILE>,port=<PORT>,volname=<NAME> USER@HOST:<path/to/mount>

    Please note that because this is run in background, (a) add sshfs to list of commands that can be run without sudo, (b) ensure the IdentityFile has no password, (c) port and host details are correct.