I've been using the "sshfs" fuse module, and its one of the greatest things I've experienced in Linux in recent years.
Lets say you have ssh access to another machine, you need to have FUSE support on your local kernel, then its just a matter of,
mkdir ~/ssh/otherhost sshfs -o idmap=user me@otherhost:/ ~/ssh/otherhost ls ~/ssh/otherhost
It sets up an sftp (ssh ftp protocol) session in the background, and I can now access whatever files I would have access to via ssh/sftp, right on my local system. Basically, it reduces,
ssh otherhost cd somedir/ $EDITOR foo.txt exit
to,
cd ssh/otherhost/somedir/ $EDITOR foo.txt
Working with files reduces to "mv", "cp", etc.
No need for kioslaves, gnome-vfs, or other such madness.
When I'm done,
fusermount -u ~/ssh/otherhost
At least on the small scale, which is all I really care about, it is SO much easier than setting up NFS, I don't even build NFS support into my kernels anymore. *No* setup is required on the other side (other than running sshd), no root access required on local side.
I wouldn't be surprised if Plan9 and other OSs have had similar capabilities, but I haven't spent enough time with them, maybe someone else can comment. In any case, it works on Linux, and I'm happy.
-Jamie
After reading this I wanted to try out sshfs, so: eastein@pippin:~/Desktop$ sshfs -d ccc.wpi.edu:~ ccc/ eastein@ccc.wpi.edu's password: fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied eastein@pippin:~/Desktop$ The same thing worked when I tried it as root. Help! Eric