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d_inevitable
Asked: 2013-05-08 16:15:23 +0800 CST

Cannot SSHFS mount user home directory

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I am attempting to setup a centralized home-directory server through sshfs and pam-mount.

Currently I am stuck at this point:

When attempting to mount the remote home directory sshfs just gets stuck:

d_inevitable@laptop:~$ sshfs -o nonempty,debug server: .
FUSE library version: 2.9.0
nullpath_ok: 0
nopath: 0
utime_omit_ok: 0

It freezes at this point.

This seems to be because the home directory includes ~/.ssh. So when I try sshfs -o nonempty server:.ssh .ssh the same thing happens.

I suppose fuse somehow initializes the mount, but then ssh needs something from it's config directory so it tries to read from it. Fuse will just block that read resulting in a deadlock.

What kind of stuff does sshfs need from ~/.ssh?

I have tried to remove all read/write permissions from ~/.ssh and then mounting on some other directory. That worked fine. The debug output only complained about writing to .ssh/known_hosts.

mount

1 Answers

  1. You are right, fuse initiates the mount first, then initiates the ssh process. This causes a problem for you, since by default ssh reads ~/.ssh/ssh_config, ~/.ssh/known_hosts

    , ~/.ssh/id_* files from user home. This behavior can be changed:

    1. ~/.ssh/ssh_config is the default per-user configuration file. An alternative per-user configuration file can be specified using -F option, or use -F /dev/null to specify no per-user configuration file.
    2. ~/.ssh/known_hosts is used to store and check host keys. You can use -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null, and either manually add the host key to /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts or use -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no.
    3. ~/.ssh/id_* files are identity files by default used for client authentication. If you want to authenticate using an identity file, you need to keep it outside the home directory and use -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o IdentityFile=<path to private key>. Or else you can authenticate interactively if you use -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o IdentityFile=/dev/null -o PubkeyAuthentication=no.

    For example to mount home using sshfs, authenticating using password, without host key checking, run

    sshfs user@server: ~/ -o nonempty -F /dev/null -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o IdentityFile=/dev/null -o PubkeyAuthentication=no
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