Accessing your Maths account files remotely via sshfs

Windows

In order to be able to map the remote folder to a local drive letter, first you have to download and install a utility called WinFsp (click on the one named WinFsp Installer), followed by the one named "SSHFS-Win (x64)" which can be found on the same page. After installing both utilities, please make sure you restart the machine, as WinFsp won't work otherwise.

You can add a graphical interface to sshfs by installing the sshfs-win-manager.

It is also possible to map a network drive to the home directory using Windows Explorer.

Mapping the home folder to a drive letter

In Windows Explorer, right click on "This PC" and select "Map Network drive...". This will bring up a dialog, where you can select the drive letter that will map to the home folder (windows will automatically select the first available letter), and fill in the following path in the "Folder" textbox, after replacing "username" with your maths username : 

\\sshfs\@email

then press "Finish" and fill in the account's password in the popup window that will appear. If done right, when you click on "This PC" again, there should be another entry now, giving you access to your home folder when you double click on it.

If you want to disconnect the mounted home folder, right click on "This PC" and click on "Disconnect Network drive".

Mac

First install the dmg/pkg macFUSE and SSHFS packages.

To use sshfs from the command line

• as a one-off step make a mount point on your local machine with a command of the form mkdir ~/sshfsmnt
• whenever you wish to mount your maths account home directory run a command of the form sshfs @email: ~/sshfsmnt
• to explicitly unmount it when finished run the command diskutil umount force ~/sshfsmnt or just eject it in Finder

You can alternatively install a graphical interface to sshfs.

Linux

First install the sshfs package for your Linux distribution - note it is pre-installed on Linux installs that the department provides.

To use sshfs from the command line

• as a one-off step make a mount point on your local machine with a command of the form mkdir ~/sshfsmnt
• whenever you wish to mount your maths account home directory run a command of the form sshfs @email: ~/sshfsmnt
• to explicitly unmount it when finished run the command fusermount -u ~/sshfsmnt

Alternatively you can mount it via a graphical file manager, e.g. in the GNOME or MATE desktop environments open the Places file browser, then from the File menu choose to 'Connect to a Server', and in the dialogue that appears set the server as gate.maths.ox.ac.uk, select the type as SSH, and the folder as /home/username (where you need to specify your maths account username).