Two-hop ssh & vnc?

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BarkyTheDog

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Feb 5, 2010, 11:34:03 AM2/5/10
to iSSH/iX11
OK, so the answer to this probably is "you can only do this on a
jailbroken iphone"...but I'll give it a go anyway...

I have a Mac at home and a Linux box at work. To get vnc access, I do
this:

ssh -A -C -L 5901:localhost:7777 mylogin@my_companys_firewall.com

and then once there I hop to my Linux box and crank up x11vnc

ssh -A -L 7777:<etc, etc>
x11vnc -display :0 -auth <etc, etc>

Then on my Mac I run ChickenOfTheVnc, and all is happy.

Any idea if iSSH/iX11 can be used to accomplish something like this
(from my iPod touch, obviously :-)

Thanks!

Dean

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Feb 5, 2010, 1:43:57 PM2/5/10
to iSSH/iX11
x11vnc can be effectively daemonized (at least in RedHat) via the
instructions here: http://www.ittidbits.com/blog/?p=121. Unless
you're concerned about having a VNC client running all the time (and
transmitting in the clear on your private network), you could then
simply specify your machine's IP and VNC port in the SSH tunneled
information and be able to log right in using iSSH.

Another alternative is having a script on the initial ssh host that
executes the commands on the remote machine on connect. You could
then specify the running of that script in the "command" option of the
VNC connection. It may not be as reliable as having x11vnc
daemonized, but certainly more secure. Hope this helps!

Dean

Chris Jones

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Feb 5, 2010, 1:46:07 PM2/5/10
to is...@googlegroups.com
Hi

On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 10:43 -0800, Dean wrote:
> Another alternative is having a script on the initial ssh host that

Since iSSH is turning into something of an excellent swiss army knife of
networking, how would you feel about adding port forwarding to it?
Obviously it presents a challenge for educating people that the tunnel
is only valid inside iSSH, but people do do these odd jumping things,
and maybe would appreciate being able to tunnel a port for a simple
browser within the app :)

Cheers,
--
Chris Jones
cm...@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net


BarkyTheDog

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Feb 5, 2010, 5:37:37 PM2/5/10
to iSSH/iX11
Hmm...interesting :-) Not so sure on whether I should daemonize
x11vnc...but the second alternative could be workable...thanks!
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