Accessing AWS EC2 Files With SMB Over SSH

The problem
Recently I had to spin up a couple of Ubuntu EC2 instances for development work. However, I didn’t want to give up the comfort of my familiar graphical editor on the laptop, nor install additional software on my local system.

The solution

Setup EC2 instance
Enable ssh port forwarding
Add the following lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config

 
    # Port forwarding
 
    AllowTcpForwarding yes

Restart sshd

 
    sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Enable Samba

    sudo apt-get install samba

    sudo smbpasswd -a <user name>

    sudo smbpasswd -e <user name>

Make a backup of the Samba config file

    sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bk

  

Create a Samba share
Add the following lines to /etc/samba/smb.conf

    [share]

    path = <path to share directory>

    valid users = <user name>

    read only = no

Restart smb and test the config file

    sudo service smbd restart

    testparm

Setup local system
Start ssh port forwarding

    sudo ssh -L 8080:localhost:445 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa <username>@<EC2 instance IP>

  

We can now connect to EC2’s SMB share using

    smb://127.0.0.1:8080 (MacOS) or \\127.0.0.1:8000 (Windows)

  

Notes

Instead of tunneling SMB over SSH, we could have installed sshfs (requires FUSE)
I blame Cornell CS for my unhealthy addiction to Visual Studio but that’s another story for another time…

Hselin

Accessing AWS EC2 Files With SMB Over SSH

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