In this blog I demonstrate how you can create an Amazon EC2 instance image that will automount a folder on a remote server via SSHFS.

The purpose here is to fire up an EC2 compute server, run a program, and save the output from that program on our local compute cluster at the university.

Basically, you just need to add a line to /etc/fstab and save the instance as an image (that’s what I did).

🧰 What you need:

  • An Amazon EC2 instance with sshfs installed.
  • A user with SSH keys properly set up to access the remote system (the SSH keys must not require a passphrase).

Let’s say your remote server has a folder named remote_folder
And your EC2 instance has a local mount point at local_folder.

Amazon EC2 Ubuntu instances typically use the ubuntu user, so the example assumes that.

Here’s the line to add to /etc/fstab (all on one line):

sshfs#ubuntu@remoteserver:/home/ubuntu/remote_folder/ /home/ubuntu/local_folder/ fuse user,delay_connect,_netdev,reconnect,uid=1000,gid=1000,IdentityFile=/home/ubuntu/.ssh/id_rsa,idmap=user,allow_other,workaround=rename 0 0

Notes:

  • IdentityFile should point to your private SSH key.
  • _netdev ensures the mount happens after the network is available.
  • reconnect attempts automatic reconnection.
  • delay_connect and workaround=rename are often needed to avoid weird mount issues (especially on boot).

⚠️ Don’t forget the trailing slashes (/) on both folder paths — it won’t work without them (speaking from bitter experience!).

🔄 Optional: Prevent SSH disconnects

To avoid idle SSH sessions timing out, add this line to your /etc/ssh/ssh_config:

ServerAliveInterval 5

This sends a keep-alive signal every 5 seconds.

That’s it!
Simple, minimal, and works well when you’re spinning up EC2 machines to crunch data and dump output to a shared server.