qrydat / sshtunnel-1

Managing of ssh tunnels via systemd

sshtunnel

An utility to manage ssh tunnel connections easily via systemd.

Packages

• Archlinux AUR: sshtunnel-git

• Fedora: sshtunnel (by metanova, thanks!)

Setting up new tunnels

First read /etc/sshtunnel.conf, understand it, and configure your new tunnel there.

Tunnels are run as the user sshtunnel. In order for sshtunnel to work, you’ll need to set up key-based authentication without a passphrase. Because of security concerns, you’re highly advised to create a new user with the shell set to /bin/false on the server:

# mkdir /var/lib/sshtunnel
# groupadd -r sshtunnel
# useradd -r -g sshtunnel -d /var/lib/sshtunnel -s /bin/false -c sshtunnel sshtunnel
# chown sshtunnel:sshtunnel /var/lib/sshtunnel

On the client, generate a new key with an empty passphrase like this:

# sshtunnel ssh-keygen

Then copy the echoed key by hand to /var/lib/sshtunnel/.ssh/authorized_keys.

Now open a test-connection to the tunnel to accept the host key:

# sshtunnel test <name>

Note this will call x11-ssh-askpass because ssh isn’t controlling the terminal.

If you’re not running X, you might want to do this by hand:

# su sshtunnel -s /bin/bash
$ ssh [email protected] exit

When you finished the setup procedure, you can now start the tunnel using sshtunnel, and then view its status:

# sshtunnel start <name>
# sshtunnel status <name>

Support

Feel free to mail me at [email protected] for any questions.