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Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

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Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#21

Post by CGamesPlay »

pacifika wrote: post #18
eqvinox wrote: post #15

I don't see any advantage over plain "-o 'ProxyJump box.in.the.middle'"? I guess this is supposed to buffer things? But then again, that's what "tail -f" is for… More confused than anything else…

Could you please give a complete example for those not aware? Ty

Given a local machine and two remote machines: ssh remote2 -J remote1. This will connect to remote1 as a normal SSH connection, but then port forward a new connection to remote2 via that connection. Traffic leaving localhost is double-encrypted, and remote1 cannot see the data.

Disadvantage: remote1 must be able to connect to remote2. In this (ssh.beam.camp) software, remote2 can be in a place where accepting incoming connections is not possible.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#22

Post by ksdme9 »

alanfranz wrote: post #16
ksdme9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beam lets you do what you described even when both the machines are isolated and not reachable from one another. All you need is ssh clients on both the machines.

But if you have ssh clients on both machines, you can use port forwarding to allow machine2 to connect to machine1 via ssh. Or you can connect both machines to the "SSH stun server" (which is something like the beam host if I understand correctly) and let them connect through that. I mean, I'm not bashing beam, but it's mostly syntactic sugar, not something that provides some actual new functionality, is that right?

Yup, you are right.

You can do this using a regular SSH server and some elbow grease. This is meant to be a simple setup and forget system that is relatively locked down and doesn't expose any more functionality than strictly necessary.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#23

Post by ksdme9 »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #17
ksdme9 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is meant for cases when the machines are isolated, for example, when you attach to a remote container and want to download a file from it to your machine.

Isolated but still able to access (and SSH!) a random server on the internet? New meaning of the word isolated

You don't have to interpret it in its strongest flavor. I meant more of inbound isolation when I said it.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#25

Post by ksdme9 »

lathiat wrote: post #24

Maybe better to use something like magic wormhole? https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

Yup, wormhole and portal are better in most aspects. Beam is helpful when you have novel constraints like not being able to install arbitrary binaries, or if you have the need to transfer streams and not just files, or maybe even pub key based white-listing of access.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#27

Post by moralestapia »

lathiat wrote: post #24

Maybe better to use something like magic wormhole? https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

No, because you have to install more crap.

This thing is "already there" and it takes two commands. I like it a lot, tbh.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#28

Post by moralestapia »

@kdsme9 I think this is great and you've done a great work putting it together and sharing it with us for free.

Using the public key to match streams on both ends is super clever. I will start using this since it fills a need I have almost every day. I work with many small AWS instances and sometimes I just need to copy a small file or something to them without having to install a whole new OS like some short sighted people here are suggesting.

You also shipped your product, which is something only ~1% of developers actually do, so congrats.

Forget about the naysayers and thank you for creating this, it will make my work easier :).

Edit: Downvote me all you want, I still like this thing.

Re: Show HN: An SSH based utility to transfer pipes across machines – beam

#29

Post by remram »

fulafel wrote: post #3
f-az wrote: post #2

After reading the readme I’m confused what the advantage is over just regular piping. ‘’’ command-on-server1 | ssh user@server2 'command-on-server2' ‘’’

The remote ssh server used in the demo seems to be a proxy service so apparently it's for cases where you can't ssh in to your example's server2.

I think you can turn this (or any equivalent service like ssh-j.com) into an end-to-end encrypted option by relaying an SSH connection over which you send the data, instead of relaying the data.

Example:

  # receiver
  ssh top-secret@ssh-j.com -N -R ssh:22:localhost:22
  socat UNIX-RECV:/tmp/foobar - | my command

  # sender
  my-command | ssh -J top-secret@ssh-j.com ssh socat - UNIX-SENDTO:/tmp/foobar
  (log in with your creds to receiver host, enjoy end-to-end encryption)
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