netdrive-connector

Utility to setup mountable SFTP and WebDAV connections on Linux/UNIX systems.

Introduction

netdrive-connector is a simple PyQt4 wrapper for the existing and standardized way to get SFTP and WebDAV shared folders (remote filesystems) mounted into your local filesystem. Usually a folder inside your home folder. With the optional addition of auto-mounting at desktop login and passwordless login.

It makes it quick and easy to get one of these shared folders up and running without having to know how to set them up manually.

News

Version 1.3.2 released.

The changes are as follows:

• Check for missing davfs2 group membership and warn user if so.
• Use fusermount -u instead of umount for sshfs unmount. On some distros, unmount of a sshfs filesystem, by a normal user, will fail.
• Big improvement to automatic mount and unmount at login/logout. This is no longer KDE centric and should work on any DE/WM that uses ~/.config/autostart/*.desktop to start applications at login. So far it's tested on the following distros: Slackware, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. And the following DE's: KDE4, KDE5, Gnome shell, MATE, XFCE, LXDE, LXQt and Unity.
• Fix bug in adding SFTP connection without password-less key. Now it no longer specifies the ssh key in the mount options.

Pros

• Simple and effective.
• Uses robust existing technologies (sshfs, davfs2).
• No unnecessary config files or metadata.
• Saves learning how to set up these remote filesystems manually.

Cons

• May inhibit learning of underlying techologies.

Current Limitations

• No UI localization support (English only).
• Only available for Linux. Hopefully FreeBSD to follow soon (sshfs only).
• Makes some assumptions about the system configuration.

Installation Notes

• Check in your distributions' repository first. If it's too out of date, use one of the following methods instead.
• Package repos for various distros can be found on OpenSUSE Build Service here: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Aethoms&package=netdrive-connector.
• Slackware has a SlackBuild available on SlackBuilds.org.
• Prebuilt packages are available in the 'packages' directory. Make sure dependencies are installed (see below).
• If no packages are available for your distribution, install distro specific dependencies then install from PyPi (pip).

From PyPi (pip)

Make sure dependencies are installed (see below).

pip2 install netdrive-connector

From source

Make sure dependencies are installed (see below).

git clone https://github.com/ethoms/netdrive-connector.git
cd netdrive-connector
python setup.py sdist
pip install dist/netdrive-connector-*.tar.gz

From basic rpm package

Make sure dependencies are installed (see below).

Caveats: this will create a very basic rpm package without dependency information.

git clone https://github.com/ethoms/netdrive-connector.git
cd netdrive-connector
python setup.py bdist_rpm
rpm -ivh netdrive-connector-*.noarch.rpm

This may be converted to other packaging systems using 'alien'. See this Alien How To.

Usage Notes

Any regular user that adds a connection will need to know the root user password. This is the way that netdrive-connector elevates permissions. For a user that is an administrator by use of sudo, they can set the root user password with the following command: sudo passwd root.

Any regular user accounts that intend to mount a connection may need additional unix groups ( fuse, sshfs, davfs2). This varies depending on the distribution.

In addition to the main GUI tool, there are command line utilities to add and remove connections. These are as follows:

add-sftp-connector

# add-sftp-connector

Usage (1): /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector username@server_url mount_point
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:/shares /home/bill/Shares
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:22/shares /home/bill/Shares

Usage (2): /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector username@server_url mount_point key
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:/shares /home/bill/Shares key
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:22/shares /home/bill/Shares key

Usage (3): /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector username@server_url mount_point key sftp_password
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:/shares /home/bill/Shares key opensesame
Example  : /usr/bin/add-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:22/shares /home/bill/Shares key opensesame
!WARNING!: this method may save your password to the HISTFILE (command history)

NOTE:    : options (2) and (3) will add a local ssh key to the remote authorized_keys for password-less login.

remove-sftp-connector

# remove-sftp-connector

Usage (1): /usr/bin/remove-sftp-connector username@server_url mount_point
Example  : /usr/bin/remove-sftp-connector bill@host1.example.com:22/shares /home/bill/Shares

add-webdav-connector

# add-webdav-connector

Usage (1): /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector server_url mount_point
Example  : /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector http://webdav.example.com:80/shares /home/bill/Shares

Usage (2): /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector server_url mount_point username
Example  : /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector http://webdav.example.com:80/shares /home/bill/Shares bill

Usage (3): /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector server_url mount_point username password
Example  : /usr/bin/add-webdav-connector http://webdav.example.com:80/shares /home/bill/Shares bill opensesame
!WARNING!: this method may save your password to the HISTFILE (command history)

NOTE:    : options (2) and (3) will add an entry to the ~/.davfs2/secrets file for password-less login.

remove-webdav-connector

# remove-webdav-connector

Usage (1): /usr/bin/remove-webdav-connector server_url mount_point
Example  : /usr/bin/remove-webdav-connector http://webdav.example.com:80/shares /home/bill/Shares

Packaging Notes

• I'm always willing to assist in packaging for as many distros as possible. Create an 'Issue' if you need assistance from me.
• Subject to the distribution and it's fuse, davfs2, sshfs packages, a user may need adding to additional groups (fuse, davfs/davfs2 etc.). In Slackware, only the davfs2 group is required.
• An ssh-askpass program should be installed and configured to work with sshfs.
• At some point in the operation of adding/removing connections, a temporary script is placed in /tmp and given execute permission. After use it is deleted. A regular user will need permissions to do this.
• The setuid bit on /usr/bin/mount.davfs* must be set in order for a user to mount davfs2 filesystems.

Dependencies

• python v2.7 or above (not python 3).
• PyQt4 v4.8 or above (python-qt4 on debian based distros).
• ssh-askpass, or a variant of. Tested with x11-ssh-askpass.
• expect (version 5.x or above should be OK).
• fuse.
• sshfs (sshfs-fuse) v2.4 or above recommended.
• davfs2 v1.4.6 or above recommended.
• openssh-client.
• awk, grep, ls, cut, chown, cat, chmod, sed, uname, who, groups.

Note: Either davfs2 or sshfs are not required if that connection type is unused.

Screenshots

netdrive-connector Main Window