Hello,

I am running Linux on a local computer to which I have root access.
I also have access to a remote server on which several files of mine
reside but I do not have root access on that server. Every time I need
one of the files on the remote server I am bound to either ssh into the
remote server and read it or else sftp the file from the remote server.
What I would like to do is have some directory called remote in my $HOME
directory so that doing:

$ cd ~/remote

would let me read all files as though I had ssh'd into the remote server.
However, I do not want all the files to be copied to the local director
if possible. I just want the directory ~/remote to act like a permanent
ssh session with the remote computer. I was thinking I could run a server
on the remote computer and then log out from it, with the server continuing
to run in the background and then have a local client do the network
transparency stuff to make my remote directory appear local.

Is this setup possible given I do not have root permission on the remote host
and do not want to have the files on the remote host copied locally (because
I only access less than 0.1% of them regularly).

Thanks!

Neil

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 20:18:02 -0800, Neil Zanella thoughtfully wrote:

I think if you don't have root privileges on the remote then you're out of
luck for NFS because IIRC that requires root to setup. But since you
can ftp to the server you can use ncftp, gftp or another gui ftp
application that provides drop and drag type access.

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Linux registered user #302812
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Noi <noi@siam.com> wrote in message news:<CyCTb.31498$Hp.20590@newssvr33.news.prodigy. com>...
I don't see why this would be the case. If the ftp protocol is used then it
should be possible to build support into the local kernel to make a directory
access effectively issue ftp commands to list the files. Right?

For example, when I issue ls, the kernel could issue ftp and issue an ls
command there and show the results. When opening a file, the kernel could
ftp the file, then write it back when it is closed. It would be somewhat
slow, but better than having to issue an ftp command each time, right?

So I don't see why it couldn't be done. Perhaps it would not be so difficult
to extend the kernel to provide some kind of FTPFS file system as described
above.

Neil

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

So anyway, it was like, 21:25 CET Feb 05 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
Neil Zanella was all like, "Dude,

Well, guess what. It's already been done:

<http://ftpfs.sourceforge.net/>

It's even been /so/ done that it's been obsoleted by another type of
file system which apparently supports sftp as well.:

<http://lufs.sourceforge.net/lufs/>

Cool, no?

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