Installing sshfs on Mac OS X

There is a very convenient possibility to remote access folders on computers via ssh: sshfs. On Mac OS X there is also a possiblity to use sshfs and this is a short introduction how to do that.

First you need to install Mac Fuse (at least version 2). Grab the latest version from the Mac Fuse homepage or even better install NTFS-3G, which allows you to write to NTFS partitions (and also installs the latest Mac Fuse version). After Mac Fuse was installed you need to grab the sshfs binaries for Leopard or Tiger. Unpack the binary and move it into a folder which is in the PATH environment variable. E.g. I put it in /Users/username/bin. Then start Terminal and type ‘nano $HOME/.profile’. Enter the line

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

to save with ctrl-o. Restart the Terminal application. Then create a directory and connect via sshfs, e.g.

mkdir remote
sshfs user@host:/some/directory remote -oauto_cache,reconnect,volname=<volname>

<volname> is the name of the mounted volume. You’ll be asked for the password and then the remote folder is available via the mount point. More information can be obtained from the corresponding wiki page.

3 thoughts on “Installing sshfs on Mac OS X

  1. You’ve got a typo in your PATH command; you want it to be PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin. Yours currently nukes the environment PATH.

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