<article lang="&language;" id="fish">
<title>fish</title>
<articleinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author><firstname>J&ouml;rg</firstname><surname>Walter</surname>
<affiliation><address><email>trouble@garni.ch</email></address></affiliation>
</author>
</authorgroup>

<date>2002-06-23</date>
<releaseinfo>1.1.1</releaseinfo>

</articleinfo>

<para>Allows you to access another computer's files using a simple
<acronym>SSH</acronym> shell account and standard &UNIX; utilities on
the remote side. This way, no server software is needed and you get
access to that computer's files as if they were local (or on
<acronym>NFS</acronym>, since it is slower than local access). It uses
the same protocol as <application>MidnightCommander</application>'s
#sh <acronym>VFS</acronym> handler.</para>

<para>Fish should work with any roughly <acronym>POSIX</acronym> compatible
&UNIX; based remote computer. It uses the shell commands
<command>cat</command>, <command>chgrp</command>,
<command>chmod</command>, <command>chown</command>,
<command>cp</command>, <command>dd</command>,
<command>env</command>, <command>expr</command>,
<command>grep</command>, <command>ls</command>,
<command>mkdir</command>, <command>mv</command>,
<command>rm</command>, <command>rmdir</command>,
<command>sed</command>,
and <command>wc</command>. Fish starts
<command>/bin/sh</command> as its shell and expects it to be a
Bourne shell (or compatible, like <command>bash</command>).
If the <command>sed</command> and
<command>file</command> commands are available, as well as a
<filename>/etc/apache/magic</filename> file with &MIME; type
signatures, these will be used to guess &MIME; types.
</para>

<para>If <application>Perl</application> is available on the remote
machine, it will be used instead. Then only <command>env</command> and
<command>/bin/sh</command> are needed. Using
<application>Perl</application> has the additional benefit of being
faster.</para>

<para>Fish may even work on &Windows; machines, if tools like
<application>Cygwin</application> are installed.  All the above
utilities must be in the system <envar>PATH</envar>, and the initial
shell must be able to process the command <command>echo
FISH:;/bin/sh</command> correctly.</para>

</article>

