sshfs
in the past i usually used samba or NFS for file shares on linux. samba made sense when i still used my windows machines primarily. nowadays it’s almost all linux…so i transitioned over to NFS. everything was all great from linux to linux box.
then i decided to introduce a windows machine, vista to be exact. and i attempted to use the native NFS client that comes with vista. the mounting syntax was somewhat different than i was used to, but it worked fine.
until….i messed up something with my NFS server config/client mount options/or unmounting/or any combination of those. and just plain crap happened to that ext3 volume because of how i was mounting the share from windows.
so lesson learned there. don’t mess with NFS on windows until you really know what you’re doing. or even…if you don’t know a lot about NFS in general don’t use it.
the good part – i finally stumbled onto sshfs. by far the best way to do simple sharing in your LAN. no need to run extra daemons (since everyone is probably already running sshd). i couldn’t find an easy enough to use implementation of sshfs for windows, which i’m sure there’s one out there somewhere. so for the time being i’m using a non-OSS product called “ExpanDrive” which works great (this product is not free). i found this just now: http://dokan-dev.net/en/download
not sure how mature and well-maintained that package is though. i’ll keep an eye on it.
update 12/12/09: more people than usual are reading this particular post because of me referencing the dokan-dev site. so here’s some more information. i have tried the dokan software on windows xp..installation is as follows:
install microsoft visual c++ 2005 redistributable package
install the dokan library (on the same site)
install dokan sshfs
it’s very easy to use, has a GUI similar to expandrive. dokan is like a FUSE implementation for windows. i could be wrong here…but it appears that the dokan library is open source, yet dokan sshfs is not. dokan sshfs appears to be freeware. i’ve done a lot of looking around on this subject and dokan, at this point, appears to be the only free sshfs for windows program out there.
final thoughts..dokan functions well enough, but it appears to still be in the early stages of development. personally, i don’t think i’d use it for any “important” data until it matures a little more. my thanks to the dokan author for working on a much needed product.
update 5/1/16:
for some reason today i decided to revisit sshfs on windows and i’m glad i did. it looks like there’s a very capable windows solution available. it is win-sshfs that relies on the dokan library. to be precise i’m using a fork of win-sshfs that is updated since it looks like the original project has been stagnant for several years. the original project is here:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/win-sshfs/
the software is very easy to use and for whatever reason the file transfer performance is considerably better than that of expandrive.
links:
updated win-sshfs (fork) – https://github.com/dimov-cz/win-sshfs
dokan library – https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany/releases
dokan home page – https://dokan-dev.github.io/