Nautilus freezes if mounted SSHFS-Device is unreachable

Question

Using SSHFS to mount remote file systems in the user space, I have the problem that all instances of Nautilus use to freeze, if one of the mounted hosts is unreachable. That problem occurs with Nautilus 2.X and 3.X and I cant find any solution until today. This problem makes SSHFS almost unusable, at least using an unstable WLAN or something like it. Is this a Nautilus bug? Can anyone confirm this problem, is there a solution?

Answer 1

This is Bug 657208 in GNOME Bugzilla.

Update:

Also there is a possible workaround found in SSHFS FAQ:

sshfs hangs after a while

Mounting works fine, I can use the files in Mountpoint as good as any other files on my system, but after bit of time, changing nothing on the remote files sshfs crashes. This means, I can not cd into the Mountpoint (xterm hangs, nautilus hangs... every program trying to access the Mountpoint gets stuck, and won't return).

Solution: add

ServerAliveInterval 15

in your .ssh/config (or use -o ServerAliveInterval=15 on the sshfs command line but I did not test that solution). This will force the ssh connection to stay alive even if you have no activity.

Answer 2

More thorough answer here: SSHFS - auto reconnect.

In short, use:

sshfs -o reconnect,ServerAliveInterval=15,ServerAliveCountMax=3 server:/path/to/mount