sshfs
OpenSSH is a suite of tools that allows (among other things) secure encrypted remote logins. I frequently use it to shell into the machine that hosts this blog. I recently learned of the SSHFS project, which allows one to mount a remote filesystem locally via ssh.
I primarily blog from my Powerbook via wireless, but I have an old Dell box running Ubuntu linux upstairs. I thought it might be nice to install SSHFS on it, for those occasions calling for a bigger monitor and some extended emacs work. The install instructions for SSHFS and the prerequisite FUSE are simple enough, and the installs seemed to go well. When I tried to use sshfs, it did not work:
[pwyll@ginger ~]$ sshfs pwyll@bidwell.textdrive.com:
~/bidwell
sshfs: error while loading shared libraries: libfuse.so.2: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory
The file did indeed exist:
[pwyll@ginger ~]$ locate libfuse.so.2
/usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2.3.0
/usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2
I wrote to the author of SSHFS, Miklos Szeredi, and explained the
situation in some detail, including a transcript of the install console
session. He was kind enough to reply, and asked “Do you have
/usr/local/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf?”.
I did not, so I put it in. Still no luck. I googled the string “/etc/ld.so.conf sshfs” and found a discussion that suggested I might need to run ldconfig. I did so, and everything finally worked.
I have no idea how people ever got this stuff to work before google. I post these remarks on the off chance they may help someone else googling for SSHFS install help. And much thanks to Miklos Szeredi, whose SSHFS is extremely cool.
Sometime afterwards I saw that there is a Debian package for SSHFS. I probably could just have used apt-get install and saved myself some trouble.