SSH tunnel prevents my spawned script from exiting - node.js

Question

I'm executing a bash script in Node.js like this:
const script = child_process.spawn('local_script.sh');
const stdout = fs.createWriteStream('stdout');
const stderr = fs.createWriteStream('stderr');
script.stdout.pipe(stdout);
script.stderr.pipe(stderr);
script.on('close', function(code) {
console.log('Script exited with code', code);
});
My local_script.sh uploads a script to my remote server and executes it:
#!/bin/bash
FILE=/root/remote_script.sh
HOST=123.456.78.9
scp remote_script.sh root#${HOST}:${FILE}
ssh root#${HOST} bash ${FILE}
Finally, my remote_script.sh is supposed to open an SSH tunnel (and perform some other actions that are not relevant for this question):
#!/bin/bash
REDIS_HOST=318.353.31.3
ssh -f -n root#${REDIS_HOST} -L 6379:127.0.0.1:6379 -N &
The problem is that even though I'm opening the SSH tunnel in the background, it seems my remote_script.sh never exits, because the Node.js close event is never called. If I don't open the SSH tunnel, it exits and emits the event as expected.
How can I make sure the script exits cleanly after opening the SSH tunnel? Note that I want the tunnel to persist after the script finishes.

Answer 1

I haven't tested this, but my guess is that the backgrounded ssh session (remote -> REDIS) is keeping the remote tty alive, and thus preventing the local -> remote session from closing. Try changing remote_script.sh to this:
#!/bin/bash
redis_host=318.353.31.3
nohup ssh -f -n "root#${redis_host}" -L 6379:127.0.0.1:6379 -N >/dev/null 2>&1 &
BTW, note that I switched the variable name to lowercase; there are a number of all-caps variables with special meanings (including HOST), and re-using any of them can have weird effects, so lower- or mixed-case variables are preferred for script use. Also, I double-quoted the variable reference, which won't matter in this case but is a good general habit for those cases where it does matter.

Answer 2

The way I managed to solve it is by using ssh -a root${HOST} bash ${FILE} in my local_script.sh. Note the -a flag which disables my forwarding ssh agent.
The important clue was that when I ran remote_script.sh on my remote machine directly, it would do everything as expected including a clean exit, but when I would try to logout, that's where it would hang.
Apparently ssh doesn't want to terminate while there are still active connections. When I typed ~#, which shows active ssh connections, it did indeed show my forwarding ssh agent.