User specific fstab for fusermount

Question

I wonder if there is something like "user specific /etc/fstab" for fusermount? ~/.fstab, ~/.config/fstab, something the like, which would work in cooperation with FUSE.

I used

sshfs foo.bar: foo.bar/

from the home dir to connect to the remote dir (there is foo.bar directory, and I have .ssh/config set accordingly). But I didn't like the repeating of foo.bar, wanted to use simple command [cmd] foo.bar/ to mount the remote directory. After some googling I found that simple "mount foo.bar/" can be made to work with the following line in /etc/fstab (also needed to enable "user_allow_other" in /etc/fuse.conf)

[email protected]:  /home/user/foo.bar  fuse.sshfs  user,IdentityFile=/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa,port=12345,allow_other  0  0

Now "mount foo.bar" works as intended (and "umount" works as well). But it seems kind of odd to edit system-wide file for user-specific purpose; also the settings already in .ssh/config are repeated there (port), the identity file has to be specified. Maintaining this for more sites (users) seems inconvenient and evidently not what /etc/fstab is for. Another oddity - FUSE is run by root (afaictl) when using this solution.

I would much prefer something like "fusermount foo.bar/", with user specific fstab.

Is there such a thing?

Answer 1

There's no per-user equivalent of /etc/fstab. You can write a shell script that reads a file of your choice and calls the appropriate mounting command. Note that from the argument foo.bar, you have to deduce multiple pieces of information: the server location foo.bar, the directory on the server (here your home directory), and first and foremost the fact that it's an SSHFS mount.

#!/bin/bash
####
if [ -e ~/.fstab ]; then
  args=("$@")
  ((i=${#args[@]}-1))
  target=${args[$i]}
  while read filesystem mount_point command options comments; do
    if [[ $filesystem = \#* ]]; then continue; fi
    if [[ $mount_point = "$target" || $filesystem = "$target" ]]; then
      if [[ -n $options ]]; then
        args[$((i++))]=-o
        args[$((i++))]=$options
      fi
      args[$((i++))]=$filesystem
      args[$((i++))]=$mount_point
      exec "$3" "${args[@]}"
    fi
  done
fi
## Fall back to mount, which looks in /etc/fstab
mount "$@"

(Warning: untested code.)

This snippet parses a file ~/.fstab with a syntax reminiscent of /etc/fstab: “device”, mount point, filesystem type, options. Note that here the filesystem type is a command to execute and the “device” is filesystem-dependent. Not all FUSE filesystem commands use this syntax with a “device” followed by a mount point, though it's a common convention.

SSH options like the identity file, the remote username, etc. can stay in ~/.ssh/config. The only reason to put them in /etc/fstab is to allow these options to be used by all users.