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Wiki > Mounting as a volume

It is possible to mount your slot as a remote volume for file management in the same program you use for managing them on your local system. The advantage of this approach over other methods is that your /home folder on the server will be mounted as a local volume or share.

Windows

SSHFS - WinFSP + SSHFS-Win

  1. Install the latest version of WinFSP
  2. Install the latest version of SSHFS-Win
  3. Open Windows Explorer and access \\sshfs\user@server.whatbox.ca and enter your password when prompted. If this does not work, press Win+R and run net.exe use X: \\sshfs\user@server.whatbox.ca instead, where X: is the drive letter you want to use for your slot. You will be prompted for your username and password.

SSHFS - Dokan (alternative)

  1. Install Dokan Library
  2. Install win-sshfs.
  3. Input server.whatbox.ca for Host, 22 for the Port, user for User, select the button next to Password, and input your password.
  4. Change Directory to read /home/user/ and select a drive letter that is not currently used by your computer.
  5. Type in a name for your settings at the top and click Save to use your settings later.
  6. Click Mount and the drive will appear on your computer. Right-click on the tray icon to disconnect.

Note: Windows 8 or 8.1 will need to run the Dokan library installer in Windows 7 Compatibility mode.

FTP with explicit TLS - RClone + WinFSP (alternative)

  1. Install the latest version of WinFSP
  2. Download the latest Windows version of RClone and place it somewhere you'll remember.
  3. Open Command Prompt and type <path\to>\rclone.exe config. Create a new FTP remote with server.whatbox.ca as the host, 21 (the default) as the port number, user as the username, and your slot password. Make sure to set the TLS option to False and the Explicit TLS option to True. The remote name can be whatever you want, as long as RClone can store the necessary characters in its config file.
  4. Create a .bat file with a single line: @<path\to>\rclone.exe mount remote: Z: --network-mode. Replace remote with the name of the remote you just created, and Z: with your preferred drive letter (or * to let RClone choose an unused drive letter automatically every time you run it).
  5. Open the .bat file to mount your slot as a network drive. RClone will continue running in a command-line window for as long as the connection is maintained. To stop the connection, switch to the command-line window and press Ctrl+C; the drive will un-mount automatically.

macOS

Finder - FTP with explicit TLS

With the Finder focused, open Connect to Server... from the Go menu. Type in ftps://server.whatbox.ca/ and hit Connect. Entering your whatbox username and password will then allow you read-only access to your files through Finder. You will still need to use third-party SFTP/SSHFS software to access/mount your slot as read-write.

SSHFS - Command line (alternative)

  1. Install macFUSE and SSHFS

  2. Open Terminal and create a local mountpoint mkdir ~/whatbox

  3. Mount your slot with sshfs. Once mounted, it will also be accessible in Finder.

     sshfs -o reconnect,ServerAliveInterval=15,ServerAliveCountMax=3,cache_timeout=3600 user@server.whatbox.ca:/home/user/ ~/whatbox

    When you are done, you can use Finder or the umount command to safely eject/unmount sshfs

     umount /Users/User-Name/whatbox

Linux

Nautilus

From the menu in Nautilus, open Connect to Server... from the File menu. Type in server.whatbox.ca for the Server: and select either FTP (with login) or SSH. Entering your Whatbox username and password will then allow you to manage your files using Nautilus.

SSHFS

  1. Install FUSE and sshfs through your distribution's package manager. On distributions based on Debian like Ubuntu/Kubuntu, open a terminal window and type sudo apt-get install sshfs
  2. Add yourself to the fuse user group, if it exists. sudo gpasswd -a $USER fuse
  3. If you had to re-add yourself to the fuse user group, log out and log back in.
  4. Create a local mountpoint: mkdir ~/whatbox
  5. Mount: sshfs -o idmap=user user@server.whatbox.ca: ~/whatbox
  6. Remote files will now be accessible through a file browser and applications in ~/whatbox
  7. You're probably going to want this to run every time you boot. You can only do so if you automatically log in via public key authentication. See here or here. Here is an init script for Ubuntu, place it in /etc/init as whatbox.conf. Search Google for how to make startup scripts for other distros if your distro doesn't use Upstart.

CurlFtpFS

FTP has often better performance than SSH, so if SSHFS does not work for you, try CurlFtpFS.
Follow this guide.