Introductory Note 832 Accessing Your University ... - Cardiff University

˜
Cardiff University
School of Computer Science & Informatics
Prifysgol Caerdydd
Ysgol Cyfrifiadureg a Gwybodeg
Introductory Note 832
Accessing Your University Files Remotely from Linux
PCs and Laptops
Robert Evans
22 nd September, 2012
Copyright c○2009, 2010, 2012 Robert Evans.
Email: Robert.Evans@cs.cardiff.ac.uk
Abstract
Users with a Linux PC or laptop outside the Computer Science network – at
home, in Halls of Residence or elsewhere on the Internet, can access their University
files on the School’s fileservers.
Users can access their Windows Novell H: drive, their Linux home directory,
their Users web site and their Project web site. This Note tells you where to find
these files and how you can access the files from a Linux PC or laptop.
Contents
1 Accessing Files Remotely from Linux 1
1.1 Why Access Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Fileservers and Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Using Nautilus or caja to Connect to a Fileserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Using Konqueror to Connect to a Fileserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.5 Using sshfs to Connect to a Fileserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5.1 sshfs prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.6 Using davfs2 to Connect to a Fileserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.7 Filezilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 Computer Science & Informatics: Introductory Note 832
1 Accessing Files Remotely from Linux
1.1 Why Access Files
Files on the School’s fileservers can be accessed from the University Campus network,
the wireless network, home, Halls of Residence or elsewhere on the Internet.
You may want to access files so that you can download them to continue working, so
that you can upload completed work, or simply to back-up work from your own PC or
laptop.
1.2 Fileservers and Files
Students in the School will use Windows PCs, and Linux and Macintosh systems.
They also have a “Users” and a “Project” web site.
So you have five different filespaces:
• for Windows - your Windows home directory which appears as the H: drive
when you log in to one of the University’s Microsoft Windows PCs on the Novell
network.
• for Linux - directory /home/scmxxx. Each user, scmxxx, has a home directory
which is seen as /home/scmxxx when they log in to one of the School’s Linux
systems.
• for Macintoshes - the user’s home directory. This appears as the home icon in
the Finder when the user logs into one of Macintoshes in the School’s laboratory.
• for the Users site - the filespace associated with your Users web pages.
• for the Project site - the filespace associated with your Project web pages.
For remote access, we have four gateway fileservers - driveh, home, machome and
websites (which is used to access files on both Project and Users web servers).
So choose the fileserver corresponding to whichever filespace you want to access:
• to access your H: drive - your Novell Windows home directory, connect to fileserver
driveh.cs.cf.ac.uk.
• to access directory /home/scmxxx - your Linux network home directory, connect
to fileserver home.cs.cf.ac.uk.
• to access your Macintosh home directory, connect to fileserver machome.cs.cf.ac.uk.
• to upload or amend files on the Users web server, connect to fileserver
websites.cs.cf.ac.uk and navigate to the users directory.
• similarly, to upload or amend files on the Project web server, connect to fileserver
websites.cs.cf.ac.uk and navigate to the project directory.
1.3 Using Nautilus or caja to Connect to a Fileserver
Nautilus is the file manager application in GNOME 2 desktops like older versions of
Ubuntu and Fedora. A version is also in GNOME 3 desktops like Ubuntu’s Unity, LinuxMint’s
Cinnamon and GNOME Shell. Caja is the same file manager in LinuxMint’s
Mate graphical user interface.

Information for Users: Introductory Note 832 3
Start the nautilus or caja file manager from the applications menu of your Linux distribution.
Alternatively, you can start it from a home directory icon, or a Computer icon
or similar which may be found on the desktop or on the dashboard.
When you have an open nautilus or caja
window, you can use Connect to Server...
from the File menu.
In the Connect to Server dialogue window,
choose SSH as the Service type and type in
the name of the server. Put your username
is the User Name field. Click the Connect
button.
You will be prompted for your password.
Type it in the Password field and check
Remember password until you logout to
prevent nautilus or caja from asking for
your password again and again.
(Note – use your standard password
even if you are connecting to machome;
do not use your Macintosh password.)
Once the connection is made, a file manager
window opens. You can drag files between
the window and the desktop, or other
nautilus or caja file manager windows.

4 Computer Science & Informatics: Introductory Note 832
To delete a file, drag it to your wastebasket.
On some versions of Linux, this is called the
Deleted Item folder. Alternatively right-click
on the file icon to obtain an options menu,
and select Move to the Delete Items folder
or Wastebasket, or select Delete from that.
The connection will create an icon on your
desktop. If you close the file manager window,
you can re-open it by double-clicking
on the icon.
When you have finished, right-click on
the icon and disconnect from the server by
selecting Unmount Volume from the menu.
Some very old versions of nautilus may not be able to use SFTP at all. In these
cases, you can use Secure WebDAV (HTTPS) instead. Perversely, however, Secure
WebDAV does not work on some newer versions of nautilus on GNOME 2 desktops
(those in GNOME 2.22 or later). Both SFTP and Secure WebDAV work in nautilus in
GNOME 3 and in caja.
If you have a working version of nautilus or caja, connection using Secure WebDAV is
accomplished in the same way as connection via SFTP.

Information for Users: Introductory Note 832 5
1.4 Using Konqueror to Connect to a Fileserver
Konqueror is the file manager and web browser application in the KDE desktop.
To start the konqueror file manager in the
KDE desktop, click on the home directory
icon in the menu bar.
Alternatively, just type konqueror in
a terminal window.
Open the Location pull-down menu and select
Open Location....
You can now type a location to access your files on one of the School’s gateway
fileservers. If your username is scmxxx, and the server is SSS, the location is
sftp://scmxxx@SSS.cs.cf.ac.uk/
In this example, we are connecting to
filespace on the websites web server.
Note that once you have typed the server
name, konqueror may prompt you to accept
the server’s host key. Click on Yes to accept
it.
You will be prompted for your password.
Type it in the Password field. You can
check the Keep password box to save the
password in the KDE Wallet password
store.
(Note – use your standard password
even if you are connecting to machome;
do not use your Macintosh password.)

6 Computer Science & Informatics: Introductory Note 832
Once the connection is made, the remote
directory is displayed in the konqueror window.
You can drag files between the window
and the desktop or other konqueror
windows.
To delete a file, right-click on the file icon to
obtain an options menu, and select Delete.
If you naviagte away from the remote directory,
you can make konqueror return to it by
selecting its location from the Go pull-down
menu.
Bugs: Some versions of konqueror apparently don’t work with SFTP. In
these cases, you can use Secure WebDAV (HTTPS) instead. For example,
open location
webdavs://scmxxx@websistes.cs.cf.ac.uk/
Note the protocol specification is webdavs instead of sftp.
1.5 Using sshfs to Connect to a Fileserver
The sshfs application is a FUSE program which will mount filesystems from SFTP
servers.
FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is an interface which allows user programs, such as
sshfs, to export a virtual filesystem to the Linux kernel. In this way, such filesystems
can be attached to the Linux file hierarchy. This is particularly useful if you want to use
Linux commands, scripts or programs to access your files on the remote server.
If you have access to FUSE on your Linux workstation or laptop, you can use sshfs to
mount any of our gateway fileservers. First, you need to create a local directory as the
mount point for the remote filesystem. Then give the sshfs command to mount your
files from the fileserver. The format of the command is:
sshfs user@host:
mountpoint

Information for Users: Introductory Note 832 7
For example, type the following in a terminal window to mount your Project web site
files in a sub-directory of your local home directory called myprojecsite:
mkdir ˜/myprojectsite
sshfs scmxxx@websites.cs.cf.ac.uk:websites/scmxxx/project ˜/myprojectsite
Sshfs will prompt you for your password. Use you standard University password (for
all servers websites, driveh, home, and machome). You will then see your Project
web site files in directory /myprojectsite.
ls ˜/myprojectsite
cgi-bin E.G.User index.htm TestScriptSchoolsComscZ.pdf
To unmount (disconnect) the fileserver, use the fusermount -u command:
fusermount -u ˜/myprojectsite
1.5.1 sshfs prerequisites
FUSE and sshfs must be installed on your Linux PC or laptop. If they are not, you will
need root or sudo permissions to install them.
For Ubuntu, LinuxMint and Debian, you can install sshfs and FUSE with:
sudo apt-get install sshfs
On Fedora, FUSE and sshfs come as standard packages from the Fedora repositories.
Package fuse-sshfs contains sshfs. As root type:
# yum install fuse-sshfs
This will install sshfs and FUSE.
On CentOS or RHEL, FUSE and fuse-sshfs are available from the RPMforge
repository. Go to https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using to see how to add RPMforge
as a yum repository and then install sshfs as above.
On Fedora and RHEL or CentOS, the user must belong to group fuse in order to
mount remote filesystems with the sshfs command.
To add yourself to group fuse, edit file /etc/group (as the root user, or with sudo).
Find the line:
fuse:x:474:
and add your username to the end, separated by a comma from other usernames, if
present. (The group number may differ).
1.6 Using davfs2 to Connect to a Fileserver
With davfs2 you can mount a WebDAV server into your local filesystem.
The following explains how to use davfs2 on LinuxMint 13, something similar will apply
to other distributions of Linux.
Use apt-get to install davfs2:
sudo apt-get install davfs2

8 Computer Science & Informatics: Introductory Note 832
Now you can create local directory and mount your filespace on one of our gateway
servers into it. The format is:
mount -t davfs -o uid=myname https://SSS.cs.cf.ac.uk/ mountpoint
In this, myname is your username on your own PC or laptop, and SSS is one of the
School’s gateway server. For example, to connect to your Novell H: drive:
mkdir ˜/h
sudo mount -t davfs -o uid=myname https://driveh.cs.cf.ac.uk/ ˜/h
You will be prompted for your username and password.
Now the files can be accessed through directory h.
To disconnect from the server, use umount to unmount the directory:
sudo umount ˜/h
1.7 Filezilla
Filezilla is a portable STFP application available on all platforms. It gives you a window
divided vertically such that the left-hand panel is a view of the local file system, while
the right-hand panel is a view of the remote file system. You can drag and drop files
between the two.
If you prefer to use Filezilla, it can be downloaded from http://filezilla-project.org/.