When a filesystem is mounted vi sshfs, what is checking the permissions on files and directories?  Is it sshfs, MacFuse, Mac OS X, or the remote server? I am mounting a remote server that is an AFS client.  I need to access some files and directories that are in the AFS hierarchy on that server.  For the most part, traditional file permission modes, owners, and groups on directories are meaningless in AFS.  In our AFS space, users don't do much with owner and group settings on directories and they choose somewhat random modes.  For example, the mode of a directory may say that it's not writable and I'm not the owner or in the group listed for the directory, but if the AFS access control lists (ACLs) say that I can write to the directory, then I can do it. The same applies to the execute mode bits, they are unimportant, I can change into a directory that doesn't have the execute bit set if the ACLs let me do it. The problem I have now is that these directories in AFS don't have the execute bit set, so I can't access them through sshfs.  So I think that sshfs, MacFuse, or Mac OS X is evaluating the mode on those directories and not letting me in.  Is there some way to prevent that local evaluation?  Just send the request to the remote server and if it gets denied there, then report an error?