Re: Using Files Without Mounting A Share From Another System

[Hal Vaughan <hal@halblog.com>]

On Apr 23, 2011, at 3:51 PM, Rob Owens wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 01:03:00PM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
>> I now know I can use smbclient to read files on an SMB share without having to mount it, but I need to do more than that.
>> 
>> I want to be able to access either Java classes or an executable on a shared volume on a server without having to mount the volume on the local system. (There are a couple reasons for not wanting to mount.)  I know on Windows I can list the files on an SMB share on another system and access them using SMB/CIFS by just specifying the volume properly on the command line.  I want to do something like that on Linux, but do more than just listing the files or copying them to the local computer.
>> 
>> I need a way, on Linux, to access files on a network share, which could be SMB or NFS (or something else) without mounting the volume.  For example, if I'm on System A and I have an executable on System B, and it's on a network share on System B, is there any way to run that executable without mounting that share as a volume on System A?
>> 
> Here's a possible workaround.  It involves mounting, but as a regular
> user.
> 
> I'd use sshfs.  The remote server needs to have an ssh server running.
> Then you can run this:
> 
> sshfs remoteserver:/some/path localdir
> 
> Then you can ls localdir, or operate on any of the files there.
> 
> If you use public key authentication and ssh-add, you can do this
> without needing to enter a password.
> 
> I've never used this to access a non-linux machine, but in theory it
> should work on anything that is running an ssh server.

That is mounting, but, as I mentioned in another email, clients that use Linux on a desktop are a lot easier to deal with on these things than Windows users.

I still have to test on Windows to be sure that I can actually run a jar from an unmounted SMB share.  I can operate on files like that, so I would think I can run a jar that way.

sshfs sounds like a good idea and I'll look into it.  That would work on both the Mac and Linux.

Thanks!



Hal