Network File Access

One of the most frustrating things about my existence as a graduate student is figuring out how to access files that are on the schools network. My desktop was helpfully set up by trusty Tom. BUT, I want to be able to use my new laptop to smoothly deal with network files. So, here is how the setup goes:

1) I set up an ssh key pair and places the public half on in my home directory on the network
I know this worked because I can: ssh rperry@login.<network name>
ssh -v rperry@login.<network name> shows you more verbose information about the completed process of logging into the ssh session
The ssh key is important for almost all ways of accessing the network.

2) bzr with network files. There is a paper written in latex that is on the group share in a bazaar repository that I would like the edit. I thought bzr+ssh would work, but it did not since the server doesn't have bazaar installed. Instead, I can use sftp:
after cd'ing to the directory where I wanted to put the branch:

bzr branch sftp://<username>@login.<network name>/group/<rest of path to directory>

Ok, so now I want to make this tied back to the main repository so that I can make changes and check them in:

Workflow:
In my lab, we use a "decentralized with shared mainline" workflow:
bzr pull
...[make changes]...
bzr commit -m "commit message here"(commits to local branch)
bzr push :parent --remember (pushes to main branch, can just use bzr push in the future)
...[if there are conflicts it will tell you]...
bzr merge (or if you are the sole owner and are confident that you want your version, bzr push --overwrite)

This main repository shouldn't have a working tree associated with it, but it does and it tells me that it will not be updated since I am pushing remotely. If you want to update it and work from there (not suggested), then you can update the working tree by doing something like this:
ssh rperry@login.<network name>
cd <repository>
bzr update

In practice, you should just branch from the main repository rather than accessing the main repository to see the files.

Yay!!!!! I can work on tex files from the lab network share from anywhere!

3) When on campus, it would be really nice just to have the whole network folder mounted. For this, I'm going to figure out how to do NFS or CIFS... but that's for the next post.