Mounting sharedscratch locally

Thanks to Phil in Computer Support for this:

1) If you're not on a computer within the theory sector, first you'll need to set up the VPN client as instructed here. Then connect to the VPN.

2) Create a mount point for your sharedscratch:

mkdir [desired mount point]

3) Use sshfs to mount your sharedscratch at the directory you created:

sshfs [cluster].ch.cam.ac.uk:/sharedscratch/[your username] [desired mount point]

e.g. For me to do it on Volkhan:

mkdir ~/sharedscratch
sshfs volkhan.ch.cam.ac.uk:/sharedscratch/khs26 ~/sharedscratch

Be careful where you create your mount point though as if you do it somewhere that root expects to be able to read (for example to make backups of /home) it won't be able to. In the thoery sector this causes false failure reports from the backup scripts. The workaround is to put your sshfs mount in /scratch and link it from /home.

sshfs has a few little bugs and quirks so it's worth reading the manpage if you have any problems. There may be a commandline option to work around it.