Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels • Hacker News Board

Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#1

Post by denysonique » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels
github.com

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#2

Post by vincentpants » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

Curious what advantages this has over mosh?

https://mosh.org/

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#3

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

vincentpants wrote: post #2

Curious what advantages this has over mosh? https://mosh.org/

[deleted]

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#4

Post by mjw1007 » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:07 PM UTC

vincentpants wrote: post #2

Curious what advantages this has over mosh? https://mosh.org/

mosh is for interactive sessions, to keep them working when the connection is flaky.

autossh is for keeping unattended ssh tunnels alive, if the connection is flaky or one end is only intermittently available. So for using tunnels for the sort of thing you might otherwise use a VPN for.

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#5

Post by sgt » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:20 PM UTC

Rather than using AutoSSH for port forwarding and such, I just create a systemd unit with a restart policy. Then you don't need autossh at all, just use ssh.

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#6

Post by xk3 » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

If you have systemd, you could do this:

    [Unit]
    Description=look ma, no autossh
    After=network.target
    
    [Service]
    Type=exec
    ExecStart=/usr/bin/ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=60 -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes -Nn -R 7070:localhost:22 pc 'sleep 20m'
    Restart=always
    RestartSec=20
    RuntimeMaxSec=30m
    
    [Install]
    WantedBy=default.target

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#7

Post by ndreas » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

I used to use autossh to set up a SOCKS proxy to tunnel my web browser traffic via my home network and it worked really well. Also had a ControlMaster on the tunnel which made SSH connections to my server instantaneous.

Nowadays I use wireguard an a dedicated SOCKS proxy. The upside is that I can access everything on my home network directly without having to tunnel.

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#8

Post by isoprophlex » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:33 PM UTC

Not 100% the same use case as autossh was built for maybe, but I'm now simply throwing tailscale on every box i need to interact with. Does away with all the port forwarding stuff, it's absolutely delightful.

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#9

Post by leetrout » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

I used autossh to do terrible things securing redis back in 2013. Fantastic tool.

Re: Autossh – automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels

#10

Post by r0n22 » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:37 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #9

I used autossh to do terrible things securing redis back in 2013. Fantastic tool.

Ohh tell me more?