Remote edit with local editor (Linux)

Question

I have a server I can ssh into, and I am also running Ubuntu. How do I edit this remote file using any program I have installed on my local Ubuntu, without copying it to local, editing it, and copying it back?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If it's Ubuntu, then you probably have the full GNOME suite installed, along with GVFS.

So you can use Places → Connect to Server to connect that server's filesystem as if were a local one.

Or you can do this (which has the same effect):

gvfs-mount sftp://hostname.domain.tld/

Then all remote files will be easily accessible.

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Unfortunately, not all programs directly support GVFS. You still can use this trick however, as GVFS is accessible by any program as a hidden directory ~/.gvfs/.

Answer 2

I use sshfs, a program that allows to mount a remote system accessible via ssh to a local folder.

Install it, create a mount point and execute:

sshfs user@host:remote_dir /path/to/mount_point

Now you can access the remote directory as a local one and you can use your text editor of choice. Moreover, as I said in this answer, I use sshfs also as an on-demand video/music streaming solution.

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Example: if you want to mount the directory music of a user called pippo at host pluto in a folder ./pippo_music then execute:

sshfs pippo@pluto:music ./pippo_music

You can also mount the root of the pluto host with:

sshfs pippo@pluto:/ ./pippo_root

To automatize this process, you can add a row in fstab:

sshfs#pippo@pluto:/ /media/pippo_root fuse defaults 0 0

Answer 3

Tramp node in emacs will do this easily: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

Answer 4

vim can open files over SSH:

vim scp://myserver.com/path/to/file.txt