Re: Reverse SSH tunelling

Raistlin Majere wrote:

>       I need some advice .. I have a situation where about fifty servers will
> be located in fifty sites that cannot allow services to be hosted. These
> servers will be in private network space behind firewalls. I can use
> them to 'scp' files out to a common home base server, but sometimes I
> need to access a command line console on these servers. I am thinking of
> having a hourly cron job ssh out to my home base server and leaving that
> tunnel open  so that I can access that console, but am looking for the
> specific way of doing this. Security os pf the utmost concern, so I need
> some sort of encrypted tunnel, hence the thought of ssh, but I don't
> know how to do this 'reverse' tunnel... I was also thinking of a 'free
> swan' vpn tunnel .. 

If you have root on the remote systems, I would suggest using a real
VPN rather than the sort of ad-hoc mechanisms which others have
suggested. The choice of exactly which VPN is likely to be determined
by what you can get through the firewall; e.g. if it only allows TCP,
then you will be limited to a PPP/SLIP-over-SSH/SSL type VPN.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@virgin.net>