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Hi everyone,

I am trying to create a symbolic-link (I think) across my network but I have very limited experience with these things and have found online help difficult to come by (perhaps I'm searching for the wrong thing). Below is an explanation of each machine.

Web Server:
The user will SSH into their Linux home directory and then ideally be presented with a symbolic link to the studio server.

Studio Server:
Requires user name and password to access the relevant part of the disc which is different for the user authenticated on the web server.

I have no idea where to start with formulating the symbolic link - can you help?

EDIT:
Sorry, I didn't explain. SSH will be done through a client such as Cyberduck, etc. The users needing to access the network drive aren't familiar with command line and to be fair, I wouldn't want them to be.

I would use FTP but that is already used to point to another machine for public use and I can't change which machine SSH is directed to.

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  • I don't think you can do that with a symlink. They work at a much lower level than Cyberduck and such things. (It would be possible if you mounted both servers' filesystems manually using NFS or SSHFS or CIFS, but not like this.)
    – u1686_grawity
    Feb 15, 2010 at 20:52

4 Answers 4

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Have a look at the Network File System.

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may be sshfs is stuff you looking for. It mount some remote server via ssh to any path in fs(like symlink). If you use public key authentication mount will occur instantly with out prompting password.

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man ln

ln -s makes a symbolic link

The network part doesn't really come into play unless the machine they ssh to is not the machine that the editor is on.

The ssh connection is a terminal server and does not do push by itself unless the system they log in to is designed to push something. For them to be presented with something, if you mean push, then you need to play with their startup files like maybe .bashrc or .login

If you mean that after ssh, they can ls or dir and see the link, then just the ln command is sufficient.

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  • Sorry, I didn't explain. SSH will be done through a client such as Cyberduck, etc. The users needing to access the network drive aren't familiar with command line and to be fair, I wouldn't want them to be. I would use FTP but that is already used to point to another machine for public use.
    – Shaun
    Feb 15, 2010 at 9:40
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You have two layers of connection here:

  • Client to Web Server
  • Web Server to Studio Server

There is no way through SFTP (eg cyberduck) to have the user enter authentication details for the web -> studio connection after they've connected to the web server. All they can do is browse folders.

It sounds like what you want to do is set up a network mount between the web server and studio server, then provide a symlink to the network mount in the user home folder. This does however mean that all users will have access to the same files (although if you use NFS, file permissions can help with that).

A few options to get you started:

  • NFS - best option if you have it (includes a section about mounting on boot)
  • Samba via smbmount (there aren't many guides on this, unless the studio server runs Windows I wouldn't recommend it)
  • SSHFS as others have recommended (I haven't tried it myself so can't comment on the suitability)
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