Hello This is an idea someone had that I thought of implementing, but I don't know whether I have the time. Regardless, I would only do it if you would include it with the OpenSSH distribution, so I would need to know your opinion. OpenSSH is a very useful an very versatile tool. Not only a remote terminal - but also an FTP-like client/server, an app for copying files, an aid for port forwarding and tunneling. For two of those features there are helper applications, little if anything more than wrappers: sftp and scp; that hide the complexity of the respective ssh commands. They achieve this by limiting the range of stuff that can be done (e.g. can't do much more than copy files with scp). For port forwarding and tunneling there are no such helpers. I spent the saturday at an install fest where a 15-year (seriously) linux veteran was struggling to remember/find the ssh syntax for making a tunnel for more than 2 hours, giving up eventually. It should be very easy (perhaps trivial) to make a script that makes this ordeal unnecessary. Pardon my ignorance, but something like: `sshforward 10000:20000`. Do the OpenSSH developers have any interest in this? Cheers, Andrew
On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 08:45:30PM -0500, Andrew Smith wrote:> For port forwarding and tunneling there are no such helpers. I > spent the saturday at an install fest where a 15-year (seriously) > linux veteran was struggling to remember/find the ssh syntax for > making a tunnel for more than 2 hours, giving up eventually. > > It should be very easy (perhaps trivial) to make a script that > makes this ordeal unnecessary. Pardon my ignorance, but something > like: > `sshforward 10000:20000`. > > Do the OpenSSH developers have any interest in this?I doubt it. Veterans will already have their own scripts and configurations set up. This can be done partly in .ssh/ssh_config using something like this: Host mytunnel HostName remote.host.com LocalForward 2525 127.0.0.1:25 ..and then: $ ssh -NT mytunnel to start it up. I would like being able to set -N and -T from ssh_config though. //Peter
Hi, On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 08:45:30PM -0500, Andrew Smith wrote:> For port forwarding and tunneling there are no such helpers. I spent the > saturday at an install fest where a 15-year (seriously) linux veteran > was struggling to remember/find the ssh syntax for making a tunnel for > more than 2 hours, giving up eventually.A "linux veteran" that is not able to find "-L" in the ssh man page won't find a special extra command either. Especially as it would need to have very much the same arguments - $ ssh -L 1000:somehost:2000 someotherhost vs. $ sshforward 1000:somehost:2000 someotherhost not much gained here. gert -- USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW! //www.muc.de/~gert/ Gert Doering - Munich, Germany gert at greenie.muc.de fax: +49-89-35655025 gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de