[FreeNX-kNX] FUSE / SSHFS

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Monday 12 December 2005 16:44, Denis Cardon wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> > > > Just discovered and tried out sshfs.
> > > >
> > > > http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html
> > > 
> > > Log into your freenx server and point konq back at your client with ...
> > >     fish://username@client.ip.address/
> > > 
> > > If your client gets a dynamic IP that you don't know you can grab it from 
> > > "nxserver --list" on the freenx server.  If we could just tunnel over the 
> > > existing ssh connection it would be better 
> > 
> > That's exactly what "nxfish" will be doing  :-)
> > 
> > >
> > The syntax will be a simple "nxfish:/" and it will auto-connect to a 
> > securely shared NX client-side directory named "NX-Share". 
> > 
> > On the NX client side, just put anything you want to share with the remote
> > session into that directory, including symlinks.
> > 
> > On the NX server side, "nxfish:/" in Konqueror (or in the FileOpen and the
> > SaveAs dialogs) will give you access to that directory.
> 
> Fuse works really well.

We know. But it requires a different Kernel or at least an additional
Kernel module. Something we can not rely to be present on our users'
systems.

> It is composed of both a kernel module (that can 
> be compiled for pre-2.6.14 kernels,

You say it.

> and user space tools. It avoids the 
> mount hell, which is a big step for humanity.

If you want to hack on FreeNX, and auto-discover the presence of FUSE,
and add FUSE-d sshfs or sftpfs or whatever if FUSE is there: be welcome.
 
> Kde kioslaves or gnome vfs are interesting technologies, but they only
> solve the problems for applications that are compiled using that
> specific technology (which amounts to just a few applications). 

For KDE I know for sure that all recent KDE versions of the last 3 years
(or even longer?) have the fish:// KIO slave. nxfish is present in KDE-3.5
(just a release of FreeNX that supports it is still missing).
 
> Fuse and ssh allow any applications to access a remote ssh share as long
> as that application is able to access the local filesystem.

We know.

And so does the kio_fuse KIO slave of KDE.

However, all these things still require manual configuration by the user.
Something we'd like to avoid. We strife for s.th. which works out of the
box. We need to come up with a solution for file sharing via sshfs or
sftpfs or whatever that is working automatically. (And we may need to wait 
another 12 months before we can assume a substantial part of users run kernel
2.6.14++).
 
> It is really very stable, it is NOT an immature technology and I think
> it really should be consired as an option for local file access under
> freenx. It will make much more sense than other virtual file system
> technologies (and much more sense that the smb access). 
> 
> Please Kurt, give it a try, it just a matter a few seconds of
> compilation and you'll enjoy a new world of file sharing over a
> network. :-)

I'm giving it tries since many months already. We'll be using FUSE
as well for klik (to get rid of the "7 loopback mountpoints added to 
fstab"-hack), but we have to be patient there too.

> Cheers,
> Denis
> 
> note : the fuse smb client is also awesome

Cheers,
Kurt