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Sshfs for Windows

github.com

81 pointskeepamovin31 comments

It baffles me that Windows Explorer still doesn't know how to connect to an SFTP site out of the box. It has been able to handle FTP sites since decades ago, and Windows has shipped with a working SSH client for several years now. Putting them together should have been a no-brainer. Even Microsoft's own VS Code can browse remote filesystems over SSH as if they were local drives. But no, Windows Explorer just keeps getting slower and crapper instead of gaining useful functions.

It seems like this is useful for mounting sshfs drives on a Windows client. Anyone know how to achieve the inverse? That is, I have SSH access to a Windows host (no WSL) and would like to access its filesystem over sshfs or scp. How to do git remotes over such a connection would also be helpful because I haven't figured that out, either.

You can install openssh server and client as Windows components nowadays, somewhere from settings. You can set up git remotes just fine with it, I don't remember trying sshfs.

They're both missing a lot of features, and which features are missing/unsupported is not documented in the tool itself (it just silently fails if you try to use options they haven't ported over, instead of telling you they're unsupported either in the docs or at run time).

The client is missing multiplexing (ControlMaster, etc.), for example. The server also has various quirks, including requiring extra configuration to allow SSHing in to administrator accounts.

If you can get away with doing everything in WSL instead, you're better off.

It's wild you can SSH into a straight up regular old DOS prompt (or WSL fwiw) with it.

There must be some sort of command code translation layer in action to make that work.

With Cygwin you could ssh into cmd.exe on Windows NT 4.0

You can ssh into any shell, it's always determined after the login.

Setting up authorized keys was a bit tricky IIRC, but otherwise can confirm it’s bundled as part of windows and just works.

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/install.121/e22624/prei...

As long as the machine you are connecting from has a working sshfs, it should be able to mount any path on any host to which you have SSH access.

sftp always worked out of the box, flawless and intuitively for me. No setup needed.

While still useful to have a native tool, you can use WSL to mount a sshfs path in windows. I even use it for LUKS containers.

> you can use WSL to mount a sshfs path in windows

and then access them from the host via virtual smb shares

   To view all of your available Linux distributions and their root file systems in Windows File explorer, in the address bar enter: \\wsl$

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/filesystems

Ackshully I think those are Plan 9 file shares, not smb.

Not everyone wants to install a huge resource just to use one feature.

thou wsl is heavier than cygwin, both options aren't really lightweight.

I thought sshfs on Linux is no longer maintained

What are you basing that on? It had a release in 2022 and last commit is 7 months old. It probably hasn't needed any new features in a while. I'm not sure how often it would need security updates.

Ah, I see now there's a note in the README[0]. It sounds more like it's in maintenance mode / understaffed than completely abandoned, but I suppose it's worth being aware of. sshfs has been a killer feature for me on my machines for years for things like playing back stuff from my media library in mpv while it's stored on another machine. I found it to be easier to use and less glitchy than NFS. So I will likely continue to use it.

[0] https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs?tab=readme-ov-file#developm...

If it works, don't fix it.

I don't think we should be telling people to keep using unsecure versions of ssh.

It’s quite possible that security is handled by ssh such that sshfs isn’t exposed over the network. If sshfs can use newer ssh it might be just fine.

I am curious how much stuff sshfs itself does and how much is just handled by ssh or fuse on your system. (am not a programmer, unfortunately, before someone says to read the code)

An insecure version of secure shell doesn't "work".

It's ok for people to have different definitions of things

People also have different ideas of what "unmaintained" means. The earlier poster was likely highlighting the common misconception that software must be constantly changed in order to be considered maintained.

Personally, if something is called secure shell and it's not secure, then it's broken. Maybe I'm weird.

The definition of maintained in indeed subjective, so I don't think it can even be called a misconception. People just disagree on what it means, but there can't be a single right or wrong answer.

Some people prefer secure software to be regularly updated and audited and won't trust other programs. I think it's a perfectly reasonable position, but I also know not everyone will think the same way.

i always figured that wsl2 used something similar to show the "guest" drive in explorer (especially since it would also show up like a network drive).

however it looks like they directly mount the virtual drive (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-dis...). this partially explains why it was so performant compared to sshfs.

Looking for something like this right now. How does it compare to rclone [1]?

[1] https://rclone.org/sftp/

installer is ~5Mb, that is a great sign!

is it stable now?

I stopped using it because of this bug [1], otherwise, it was great. The fastest SSH mount on Windows I ever seen. Real shame.

[1] https://github.com/winfsp/sshfs-win/issues/244

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