Automatically mounting a remote directory in Ubuntu using au

here: http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/001928.html


>Install sshfs and autofs:

#sudo aptitude install sshfs autofs

>Add yourself to the fuse group:
#sudo gpasswd -a $USER fuse

>Log out and in again.
>Generate a private key (~/.ssh/id_dsa_open) without passphrase, and a corresponding public key (~/.ssh/id_dsa_open.pub):
#ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa_open
(press enter to keep the passphrase empty; it has to be passphrase-less, because autofs runs as root so can't use your ssh-agent to handle the passphrase)

>Copy the public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote host:
#ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa_open.pub [email protected]

>Test that root can log into the remote host using the new key pair:
#sudo ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa_open [email protected]

>Add a new entry to /etc/auto.master:
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/media/sshfs	/etc/auto.sshfs	--timeout=3600 --ghost --verbose


>Add one or more entries to /etc/auto.sshfs:
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foldername -fstype=fuse,rw,allow_other,noatime,IdentityFile=/home/localusername/.ssh/id_dsa_open :sshfs\#[email protected]\:/path/to/folder

>(replacing "foldername" (the name of the local folder that will be created), "localusername", and the sshfs information as appropriate)
Restart autofs:
#sudo restart autofs

>Open /media/sshfs - the remote folder(s) should now be mounted there.