Recommendation: SftpDrive

My development environment consists of an IBM Thinkpad x31 running Windows XP and a mix of servers running FreeBSD, Linux, and even OS X. One common element across all of them is that I use ssh to log in and transfer files around. On Windows I've been using the openssh client that comes with cygwin, I have no idea what's running on the server side but suspect it's also openssh based.

I've tried various methods of keeping directories in sync, using rsync, scp, scripts built on cvs. They have all worked, but tend to be a pain.

What I really wanted was a way to mount remote filesystems securely and easily.

I discovered sftpdrive for Windows through a search several weeks back and have been quite pleased. It's lightweight and unobtrustive. It imported my ssh keys and lets me use the same passphrases I've been using. If I wanted to, I suppose, I could create a new key pair (and that would likely be the smart thing to do but I haven't done so).

It mounts your home directory on the remote filesystem as a Windows drive. Windows applications seem to be ignorant of the theoretical impossibility of this feat (if you have drunk too much Redmond blend).

I haven't stress tested it, I haven't done much more than my routine work with it (navigate folder looking for file to edit, edit file in emacs, save file). It just works, which is all I ask.

If you are using Windows as your front end and are working on remote servers using ssh (it doesn't really seem to matter what the remote O/S or filesystem is, I've used it without problem with a Windows box I have) you might look into using SftpDrive.

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From: Alister
Date: October 9, 2006 02:51 PM

Thanks. Been looking for something like this. Doing similar things with rsync, automount/nfs, ssh with expect (shudder!), etc. Do you keep an hosts file synced accross your systems or run a local bind?

From: Alister
Date: October 9, 2006 04:46 PM

Mentioned this to a collegue and he recommended OpenFiler as a storage management solution. Not played with it myself but it looks impressive.

From: epc
Date: October 9, 2006 07:17 PM

I have three internal systems which all resolve internally (I run a dns), they also broadcast using mDNS so I can also reach them as hostname.local (most of the time). I need to get better at synching my authorized_keys files around, that's the only one that causes me problems at this point.

From: WebDrive
Date: October 20, 2006 10:46 AM

It looks similar to our WebDrive product (www.webdrive.com). WebDrive supports SFTP, WebDAV, FTPS and FTP; also block level I/O, locking, and offline mode with synchronization features.

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