Mount an SFTP Server on Linux — NetDrive Setup Guide

A dev box running Ubuntu needs to read config files off a staging server, or a build script wants to write release artifacts straight to a deploy host over SSH, without a scp loop wedged into every script that touches the remote path. NetDrive’s Linux build mounts an SFTP server as an ordinary mount point — the same connection type it offers on Windows and macOS — so /mnt/deploy-host/releases/ behaves like any other directory to cp, cat, or a Python script opening a file.

Mount an SFTP server on Ubuntu

NetDrive lets Google Drive, OneDrive, S3, SFTP, WebDAV and more appear as native drives on Windows and macOS — no syncing, no full downloads.

• Runs on Ubuntu 16.04 and later
• Password or SSH key authentication, symlinks included
• Read and write through a normal mount point — no scp wrapper scripts

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Why Mount Instead of Scripting scp or rsync

scp and rsync work fine for one-off transfers, but neither gives you a path you can just point a program at. A log-tailing script, a text editor, or a deploy tool that expects open() on a local-looking path has nothing to do with either of them — you’d need to copy the file down first, edit it, then copy it back up, and remember to do that in the right order every time. Mounting the SFTP server through NetDrive skips that round trip: the mount point resolves reads and writes against the server directly, so a script doing cat /mnt/staging/nginx.conf gets the live file, not a stale local copy from an hour ago.

Symlink support landed in NetDrive 3.17.817, which matters here specifically — Linux home directories and /var/www layouts lean on symlinks constantly, and they resolve correctly through the mount rather than showing up as broken links.

Installing NetDrive on Ubuntu

NetDrive for Linux isn’t in Ubuntu’s default package repositories, so installation goes through GitHub instead of apt:

1. Go to github.com/NetDrive/installer and download the release matching your Ubuntu version.
2. Follow the installer repo’s release notes for that version — a driver component has to be installed before NetDrive can mount anything.
3. Install the NetDrive package itself.
4. Launch NetDrive. First run loads the driver component, which may prompt for sudo depending on your system’s permission setup.

Because updates ship as GitHub releases rather than through apt upgrade, checking for new versions is a manual step — worth a line in whatever runbook covers this box. The minimum supported version across NetDrive’s Linux build is Ubuntu 16.04, and support here carries the same experimental label NetDrive’s own comparison page uses for Linux generally — Windows and macOS get the bulk of the testing, so validate against your specific distro and workload before depending on the mount for anything unattended.

Step-by-Step: Connect an SFTP Server on Ubuntu

1. Open NetDrive’s Drive Manager and click + Add Drive.
2. Select SFTP from the list of connection types.

3. Enter the server address — hostname (deploy.example.com) or IP address — and set the port. SFTP defaults to 22; some hardened servers run on a non-standard port instead.
4. Configure authentication:
   • Password: username and password directly.
   • SSH key: point NetDrive at your private key file. Both OpenSSH format (id_rsa) and PuTTY .ppk files are accepted.
5. Set a mount point — a path like /mnt/deploy-host, or any empty directory you have write access to.
6. Click Connect. NetDrive authenticates and mounts the server at that path.

If the server allows anonymous SFTP with no credentials, NetDrive has supported credential-optional connections since version 3.7.687 — leave the username and password fields blank.

Verifying the Connection Before You Trust It

Confirm the mount actually took from a terminal rather than trusting the GUI alone — good habit on an experimental build, and worth doing before wiring a script to depend on the path being there:

# Confirm the mount is listed
mount | grep deploy-host

# Or just try listing it
ls /mnt/deploy-host

If the connection failed before you got this far, check reachability first — a wrong hostname or a blocked port covers most SFTP connection failures:

# Basic reachability
ping deploy.example.com

# Is the SFTP port actually open?
nc -zv deploy.example.com 22

A successful nc -zv means the port is open and the remaining problem, if any, is in credentials or server-side permissions rather than the network path.

What to Plan Around on the Linux Build

• Separate release cadence — the Linux driver component is maintained on its own schedule, so a fix on Windows or macOS doesn’t automatically land on Linux the same week.
• No package manager integration — GitHub releases only, no PPA or Snap as of this writing.
• Recommended primary platforms — NetDrive’s own guidance treats Windows and macOS as the hardened, production-ready targets. Linux fits a dev box, a CI runner, or a home server supplement well; it’s not yet where you’d bet an unattended production pipeline without your own testing first.

Wrap-up

Mounting SFTP on Ubuntu gets you the same drive-style access NetDrive provides on Windows and macOS — a normal path any tool can read and write — through an installer that lives on GitHub instead of apt. For the broader Linux picture, see NetDrive on Ubuntu Linux; for the same connection type on a more heavily tested platform, see Mount an SFTP Server on Windows — NetDrive Setup Guide.

— Casey, NetDrive