How to specify key in SSHFS?

I’ve got a question that I’ve not been able to find an answer for. I have two computers, both of which run Ubuntu Linux 12.04. I have set up my first computer (“home”) to be able to SSH into my second computer (“remote”) using public/private RSA key authentication.

This is not the first SSH connection that have set up using key authentication on my home computer, so my home computer has several id_rsa private keyfiles (each of which is for a different computer to SSH into). Thus, I am able to successfully SSH only when I specify a keyfile (in ssh, the -i option), using ssh [email protected] -i path/to/keyfile/id_rsa.2.

That works great. However, I would also like to use sshfs, which mounts the remote filesystem. While ssh seems to play nice with multiple keys, I can’t find a way to get sshfs to use the correct private key (“id_rsa.2”).

Is there a way to get sshfs to do this?

Answers:

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Method 1

Here’s what works for me:

sshfs <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="0d60684d75237523752375">[email protected]</a>:/remote/path /local/path/ -o IdentityFile=/path/to/key

You can figure this out via man sshfs:

-o SSHOPT=VAL ssh options (see man ssh_config)

man ssh_config

IdentityFile

Specifies a file from which the user’s DSA, ECDSA or DSA authentication identity is read.

Method 2

What you need to do is specify which private key to use in the ~/.ssh/config file. for example:

Host server1.nixcraft.com
    IdentityFile ~/backups/.ssh/id_dsa
Host server2.nixcraft.com
    IdentityFile /backup/home/userName/.ssh/id_rsa

Method 3

sshfs -o ssh_command='ssh -i path/to/keyfile/id_rsa.2' <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="93e6e0f6e1fdf2fef6d3fae3f2f7f7e1f6e0e0">[email protected]</a>:/path /local/path

Method 4

Adding to the solution proposed by @Steven You, a simple solution is :

1. go to ~/.ssh/config

Host <nick name>
    HostName  <ipaddress>
    User <username>
    PubKeyAuthentication yes
    IdentityFile <path/to/keyfile/id_rsa.2>

2. sshfs -p 22 <nick name>:source/file/on/server local/folder/

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0