I really don’t want to be that guy, but isn’t SSHFS (FUSE) actually a terrible option when compared to an actual file-system? MacOS isn’t really missing out on much there.
The most painful part of MacOS (which makes it downright unbearable for me) is that system configuration files are XML. It’s an absolute nightmare.
SSHFS uses SFTP which is built into SSH, so no server to install. Its not as fast as NFS, but requires no setup. For something small like a home lab, that is a big advantage.
SSHFS is very mature. I use it for administering several home servers.
It works so well that they added a mode where some users can have SFTP only access (without SSH shell) so you can set up shared directories. It was easier to set up (for me) than CIFS or NFS.
For some (most?) of us, we don’t have ssh access open to the world, so everything is over a VPN. So I can just use NFS over WireGuard which afaik is fairly secure, if you trust your endpoints, and works great over the Internet.
Wouldn’t you just use AFS, CEPH, NFS, or 9p?
I really don’t want to be that guy, but isn’t SSHFS (FUSE) actually a terrible option when compared to an actual file-system? MacOS isn’t really missing out on much there.
The most painful part of MacOS (which makes it downright unbearable for me) is that system configuration files are XML. It’s an absolute nightmare.
SSHFS uses SFTP which is built into SSH, so no server to install. Its not as fast as NFS, but requires no setup. For something small like a home lab, that is a big advantage.
SSHFS is very mature. I use it for administering several home servers.
It works so well that they added a mode where some users can have SFTP only access (without SSH shell) so you can set up shared directories. It was easier to set up (for me) than CIFS or NFS.
SSHFS is secure and works well over the internet. If you only want to access it over the LAN, then NFS is a much better option.
For some (most?) of us, we don’t have ssh access open to the world, so everything is over a VPN. So I can just use NFS over WireGuard which afaik is fairly secure, if you trust your endpoints, and works great over the Internet.
I’ve never had good luck with NFS on a high latency connection. SSHFS still works fine even if the server is on the other side of the planet.
NFS should work well enough on high latency connections - it was designed back when it was fairly uncommon to connect to a server over dial-up.
It’s definitely possible that SFTP is more optimized than NFS though.