How to mount a remote directory in Linux using sshfs

Step1: Installing Package

On Ubuntu/Debain

apt-get install sshfs

On Redhat/CentOS/Fedora

rpm -ivh fuse-sshfs-1.8-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Step2: Once the package is installed we have to create a mount point and mount our  server data using sshfs command, for which we require  username/password. Here are my details for this task.

My Username: root

My password: redhat

My Server: 10.233.10.212

My mount point: /mnt/ssh

Now create the mount point and mount SSH account data.

#mkdir /mnt/ssh #sshfs root@10.233.10.212:/ /mnt/ssh/

root@10.233.10.212's password:

Step3: The above command will mount my root directory in 10.233.10.212 server. Testing our setup
Check if you are able to see data
#cd /mnt/ssh
#ls
Sample output

bin   cdrom     data  etc   initrd.img      lib         media  opt   root  selinux  sys   tmp  var      vmlinuz.old
boot  cmdb-bkp  dev   home  initrd.img.old  lost+found  mnt    proc  sbin  srv      test  usr  vmlinuz

What about df -hs command output?
Sample output
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 12G 8.4G 2.5G 78% /
/dev/sda6 80G 43G 34G 56% /var
/dev/sda5 2.0G 41M 1.8G 3% /home
/dev/sda1 99M 12M 83M 12% /boot
tmpfs 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm
sshfs#root@10.233.10.212:/ 1000G 0 1000G 0% /mnt/ssh
Step4: So what about mounting it permanently?. We can do it by editing fstab file in /etc folder
#vi /etc/fstab
go to last line and type below line
sshfs#root@10.233.10.212:/ /mnt/ssh fuse defaults 0 0
Save the file and exit. Now run mount -a to update the fstab file state to kernel.
Note: Its not advisable to write passwords in human readable files like /etc/fstab.
#mount -a
Let me explain what entry in fstab indicates. We are mentioning mount user root data which is located on 10.233.10.212 server on to /mnt/ssh using fuse file system with default settings.
Step5: What about unmounting this drive?

#umount /mnt/ssh

Enjoy new learning of mounting a folder using SSH protocol.