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 access sftp:// URLs directly in all apps.

• Use Places → Connect to Server to connect that server's filesystem as if were a local one.

• Do the same from command line using

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

While GVFS is specific to GNOME apps, all mounted GVFS locations are accessible by any program via /run/<user>/gvfs (or ~/.gvfs/ in older versions).

KDE programs also support sftp:// via KIO, although they don't have the equivalent of /run/<user>/gvfs.

Answer 2

Try 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, you can use sshfs as an on-demand video/music streaming solution (see this answer).

---

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 automate this process, add a row in fstab:

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

Answer 3

Update on an old question:

KDE supports a FIle over SsH protocol called fish. Basically, you open your file as URL with the fish:// scheme referring to the file. KDE copies the file over locally to a temp file as you edit. Saves and a quit will push the file back to the remote server.

e.g.

kate fish://user@host:/path/to/file.txt

There's a wrapper for non-KDE editors (or any tools):

kioexec other-editor-or-tool fish://user@host:/path/to/file.txt

Remember that you probably have the KDE libs on your machine, even if you run GNOME desktop or something else.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

vim can open files over SSH:

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