sshfs command error: ‘invalid argument’ for local_dir

[Andrea L]

I have installed sshfs on my MacOS using the instructions from the lab. However, when I run
sshfs eddie:/exports/chss/[my directory] ~/Desktop/Eddie , I get the error ‘sshfs: invalid argument ‘/Users/Desktop/Eddie’

Furthermore, when I run sshfs –version, I get the following response:

“SSHFS version 3.7.5
FUSE library version 3.17.4
using FUSE kernel interface version 7.40
macFUSE mount version 5.1.3

This program is not meant to be called directly. The macFUSE library calls it.”

What does it mean by “This program is not meant to be called directly.”? What can I do to troubleshoot this?

[Simon King]

For some reason ~/Desktop/Eddie is expanding to /Users/Desktop/Eddie which will not exist. Your username is missing from the path.

Try using /Users/username/Desktop/Eddie where username is your username on your Mac.

Alternatively, cd with no arguments, to go to your home directory, then use ./Desktop/Eddie

(I think you can ignore “This program is not meant to be called directly” – looks like an error message from an underlying library that you will only get when asking for the version.)

[Andrea L]

./Desktop/Eddie works! Thank you!

In terms of the /Users/Desktop/Eddie, thats a typo on my part. The actual error output was /Users/[myusername]/Desktop/Eddie. Not sure why that didn’t work.

[Simon King]

What is the output of cd with no arguments then pwd ?

[Andrea L]

The output of cd & pwd is just /Users/[myusername]. Also, I checked my bash history and realised the initial error was because of a typo in the host directory name (eddie:/exports/chss/[my directory]) . However, it seems sshfs defaults to reporting an error with the mountpoint instead, even though the problem is with the host directory name, so I got confused. I tested using ~/Desktop/Eddie as the mount point again after I fixed the error and it works fine too.

Apologies for the confusion and thank you for your help!!

[Author]

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