You may need to work on remote hosts file systems and copying files over with scp/sftp may be a hassle. This is why sshfs is in place - you can mount remote file systems locally on your computer
How to do it (on ubuntu) - install first the sshfs
$ sudo aptitude install sshfs Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: sshfs 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded. Need to get 40.8kB of archives. After unpacking 143kB will be used. Writing extended state information... Done Get:1 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main sshfs 2.2-1build1 [40.8kB] Fetched 40.8kB in 0s (44.3kB/s) Selecting previously deselected package sshfs. (Reading database ... 197354 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking sshfs (from .../sshfs_2.2-1build1_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up sshfs (2.2-1build1) ... Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Writing extended state information... Done
then is as easy as
$ mkdir /tmp/remote_host_name_yours $ sshfs your_remote_host: /tmp/remote_host_name_yours $ cd /tmp/remote_host_name_yours
that is it ! (you may be need to input a password or paraphrase)
to umount the remote file system you need to use
$ fusermount -u /tmp/remote_host_name_yours
for more info see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html
