Ever need to be able to mount filesystems or remote shares on a linux system without being root or a privileged user? FUSE is the answer.

What is FUSE? FUSE stands for file system in userspace. For in depth explanation check out the projects site. http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

Download and install the rpmforge package to get access to the fuse packages.

http://apt.sw.be/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Install the rpm using root like so.

rpm -ivh /path/to/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

After the package is installed run the following command to get the right fuse packages installed.

yum install dkms-fuse fuse-sshfs -y

Setup the users to be in the fuse group to allow them to mount ssh sessions.

Click on the system menu > Administration > Users and Groups.

Click on the Edit menu and select preferences

Uncheck hide system users and groups and click close.

Click the Groups tab and double click on the fuse group.

Click on the Group Users tab and put a check next to any users you want to be able to mount filesystems using ssh. Click ok and close the User manager.

You may have to reboot to make the system recognize the changes to the group.

How to mount a remote file system using ssh.

Open a terminal window and use the following syntax.

sshfs user@host:/path/to/desired/directory/ /path/to/mount/point/

For example lets assume you have an account on a server with the IP 192.168.1.100 and the username is bob. You want to mount a directory on the remote system in your home called reports to a local directory of the same name. First create the local directory to mount to.

mkdir ~/reports

mount the remote directory.

sshfs bob@server.example.com:/home/bob/reports/ ~/reports/

How to unmount the share point.

fusermount -u ~/reports