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Mounting Fabian storage on your computer using rclone

Before you begin ensure you can ssh to Fabian using ssh fab. For help with that follow the guide Logging in via SSH and transferring data via SCP/SFTP/rsync

Install rclone

Download and unzip rclone from https://rclone.org/downloads/.

rclone/rclone.exe can be run from any location,though placing it somewhere in your PATH is convenient.

Configure rclone

Locate rclone's config file with the command .\rclone config file

You'll see something like

Configuration file is stored at:
C:\Users\U.Username\AppData\Roaming\rclone\rclone.conf

Open rclone.conf in a text editor and add a section for fab.

Replace your LSE username here with your LSE username, that is the one you see when you login to fabian and NOT your local username or email address.

Ensure the file is named exactly rclone.conf (not .txt).

[fab]
type = sftp
host = jump.fab.lse.ac.uk
user = your LSE username here
port = 22619
shell_type = unix
key_file = C:\Users\U.Username\.ssh\id_ed25519
Keeping your ssh key protected by a passphrase

If you have used a passphrase to protect you private key please see below for details on setting up ssh-agent

Test the connection rclone lsd fab:

If successful, you’ll see directories from your Fabian home.

Mounting storage

Install the winfsp program from https://github.com/winfsp/winfsp/releases

As this requires administrator rights on your device users with LSE owned devices will need to wait for this to be available from the App Store, it has been requested.

You can mount your storage with the command rclone mount fab: \\fab\home you should now see a network drive in your windows file explorer

If you want to mount the storage from another part of Fabian, say a project you are a member of then add that path

rclone mount fab:/projects/my_department/projectname \\fab\projectname

Keeping your ssh key protected by a passphrase​

If you wish to keep your ssh key protected with a passphrase you will have to use ssh-agent to hold the decrypted key so that rclone can use it.

As an administrator on your windows device set the ssh-agent service to start automatically and start the ssh-agent service with the following commands in a powershell console


Get-Service ssh-agent | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Start-Service ssh-agent

Then add your ssh key ssh-add .ssh\id_ed25519

Additional Documentation​

For more details and options please refer to rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/