mounter 0.1.0

Mount remote SSH directories via SMB2-over-SFTP. No FUSE, no Docker, no sudo.
Documentation 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101

# mounter

Mount remote SSH directories in your file manager. No FUSE, no Docker, no kernel extensions.

Works on macOS and Linux.

## Quick start

```bash
cd smb-sshfs
cargo build --release

# One command: mount, serve, Ctrl-C to stop
./target/release/smb-sshfs mount user@server:/path
```

Or start the server and mount separately:

```bash
./target/release/smb-sshfs user@server:/path          # prints mount command
mount_smbfs //guest@localhost:<port>/server ~/mnt/server   # macOS
```

## Commands

```
smb-sshfs mount [user@]host:[path] [opts]   Mount and serve (Ctrl-C to stop)
smb-sshfs [user@]host:[path] [opts]         Start SMB server only
smb-sshfs unmount <name|path|all>            Unmount cleanly (handles busy mounts)
smb-sshfs list                               Show active mounts
```

Options:

```
  -p PORT         SSH port (default: 22)
  -i IDENTITY     SSH identity file
  -n NAME         Share name (default: host)
  --smb-port PORT Local SMB port (default: auto)
```

## How it works

```
File manager <--SMB2--> smb-sshfs (localhost) <--SFTP/SSH--> remote server
```

`smb-sshfs` is a single Rust binary that speaks SMB2 to your OS and SFTP v3 to
the remote. It spawns `ssh -s sftp` as a subprocess — existing SSH keys,
config, and agent just work. No kernel extensions, no privileged containers.

## Platform support

| Platform | Mount method | Status |
|----------|-------------|--------|
| macOS | `mount_smbfs` (built-in) | Full support |
| Linux | `smbclient` / userspace tools | Works |
| Linux | `mount -t cifs` (kernel) | Needs NTLMSSP improvements |

On Linux, the SMB2 server works — `smbclient` can list and read files. The
kernel `mount.cifs` driver requires stricter NTLMSSP authentication than
macOS's client; this is being worked on.

## Performance

Benchmarked against raw `ssh cat` on the same connection:

| Operation | Time |
|-----------|------|
| `ls -la` (45 files, cold) | 103 ms |
| `ls -la` (45 files, warm) | 5 ms |
| `stat` single file | 5 ms |
| 108 MB sequential read | 91% of SSH throughput |

Key optimizations:
- **Session-level directory cache** — macOS sends hundreds of per-file
  QUERY_DIRECTORY lookups for `ls -la`; all served from a 15s TTL cache
  after one SFTP readdir.
- **Pipelined SFTP reads** — large reads send multiple 256KB requests
  in parallel to saturate the SSH pipe.
- **Read caching** — each SFTP response is cached so small
  resource-fork probes don't trigger extra round-trips.
- **Negative caching** — Apple metadata files (.DS_Store, ._*, etc.)
  that never exist on Linux are cached as absent for 60s.

## Requirements

- macOS or Linux
- SSH key auth to your remote server
- Rust toolchain (to build)

## Tests and benchmarks

```bash
cargo test          # 54 unit tests
cargo bench         # criterion benchmarks for hot paths
```

## License

Apache 2.0