offering mysql on localhost via a ssh layer - linux

I have 2 machines: One has a mysql server that runs on localhost.The second one has no mysql server. I want to access the mysql server from the first machine on the second machine also on localhost. It should be something like a virtual localhost.
The first machine should log in the second machine via secure socket and should emulate the server there somehow.
Is something like this possible, how is it called , and how does it work.
Is this what is called a tunnel?

Yes, this is what is called a tunnel.
Assuming host A is running the mysql server and host B is the one that dose not.
To create the tunnel enter the following on host B:
ssh -L 3306:localhost:3306 username#A
(Add -f -N to the command to not execute any command on the remote host and immediately background the ssh connection).
This creates a listening port 3306 on host B which is forwarded over the ssh tunnel to localhost:3306 on host A.
Now just run mysql on host B and you should be able to connect to the mysql server on host A.
Hope it helps!

Related

SSH Tunnel to Ngrok and Initiate RDP

I am trying to access my Linux machine from anywhere in the world. I have tried originally port forwarding and then ssh'ing in; however, I believe my school's WiFi won't allow port forwarding (every time I ran it, it would tell me connection refused). I have setup an account with ngrok and I can remotely SSH in, but now I am wondering if it is possible to RDP. I tried connecting via the Microsoft Remote Desktop app on Mac, but it instantly crashes. I have also looked at trying to connect with localhost, but it's not working. So far, I have tried (with xxxx being the port):
ssh -L xxxx:localhost:xxxx 0.tcp.ngrok.io
and
ssh -L xxxx:localhost:xxxx <user>#0.tcp.ngrok.io
but my computer won't allow it and after about 2 or 3 times, it warns me of a possible DNS Spoofing. Is there anyway that I can run a remote desktop of my linux machine that I have ssh tunneled to (from my mac) on ngrok? Thank you!
First you'll need to sign up with ngrok if you haven't already and you'll be given an authtoken. You'll need to install this by running
./ngrok authtoken <insert your token here>
This will save your token to a file located ../username/.ngrok/ngrok.yml
Then you'll need to ask ngrok to create a TCP tunnel from their servers to your local machine's Remote Desktop port which should be 3389 by default
ngrok tcp 3389
Give it 30 seconds or so then jump to http://localhost:4040/status to see what the tcp address ngrok has allocated you. It should look something like tcp://1.tcp.ngrok.io:158764
Now you should be able to remote into your machine using address 1.tcp.ngrok.io:158764

Listening port putty tunnel does not work

The goal is to connect to my home computer from outside. The ISP blocks all the ports (and demands $$$ for business package with static ip address), so simple port forwarding on home router does not work.
I have used putty to tunnel a listening port to a remote server: R2221:###.###.###.###:2221 (to make things simpler, the test server is a simple ftp server running on my home windows machine) (the entire ip address has to be specified -- with OpenSSH 1.0 running on the linux box wildcard address results in refusal of connection) (GatewayPorts are set to on).
Netstat -a confirms that port 2221 on the linux box is open and listening. However, whenever I try to connect to that port, it simply hangs. Command line ftp client says "connected to ###.###.###.###" and that's it. Running netstat again shows dozens of opened connections to port 2221, all coming from my windows box (I tried using browser as well as command line ftp client).
Which step am I missing?
Tried with RDP, VNC and FTP -- all of them hang, all of them connect when connecting through my home network (or my home router).
EDIT The setup is as follows:
PC 1 (windows) has FTP service running on port 2221. It uses PuTTY to tunnel a listening port to PC 2 (linux). PC 2 does show listening port when running netstat. Connecting to port 2221 on PC 2 either form PC 2 or from PC 3 results in hanging.
EDIT 2 Aaaand it worked. Using 127.0.0.1 instead of the remote machine's ip address was what corrected it. Thanks a lot.
Are you sure your -R command is correct? From what you say I suppose the command should be R2221:127.0.0.1:2221. The -R ssh option in form of port:host:hostport does the following: it opens port port on the remote side and forwards the connection to that port to local address host:hostport, and this connection is made from the local machine.
To make your local machine (the one that is running ssh client, e.g. PuTTY) connect to your local FTP server running on the same machine, use 127.0.0.1 as an address.
It also explains why you see a strange behaviour: when you actually connect to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2221, it forwards the connection to the same address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2221 and you get some kind of a loop.

SSH Agent forward specific keys rather than all registered ssh keys

I am using agent forwarding, it works fine. But the ssh client is sharing all registered (ssh-add) keys with the remote server. I have personal keys that I don't want to share with the remote server. Is there a way to restrict with keys are being forwarded?
I have multiple github accounts and aws accounts. I don't want to share all the ssh-keys.
Looks like it is possible with OpenSSH 6.7 - it supports unix socket forwarding. We could start secondary ssh-agent with specific keys and forward it's socket to remote host. Unfortunately this version is not available for my server/client systems at the time of writing.
I have found another possible solution, using socat and standard SSH TCP forwarding.
Idea
On local host we run secondary ssh-agent with only keys we want to see on remote host.
On local host we set up forwarding of TCP connections on some port (portXXX) to secondary ssh-agent's socket.
On remote host we set up forwarding from some socket to some TCP port (portYYY).
Then we establish ssh connection with port forwarding from remote's portYYY to local portXXX.
Requests to ssh agent go like this:
local ssh-agent (secondary)
^
|
v
/tmp/ssh-.../agent.ZZZZZ - agent's socket
^
| (socat local)
v
localhost:portXXX
^
| (ssh port forwarding)
v
remote's localhost:portYYY
^
| (socat remote)
v
$HOME/tmp/agent.socket
^
| (requests for auth via agent)
v
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$HOME/tmp/agent.socket
^
| (uses SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable to find agent socket)
v
ssh
Drawbacks
It is not completely secure, because ssh-agent becomes partially available through TCP: users of remote host can connect to your local agent on 127.0.0.1:portYYY, and other users of your local host can connect on 127.0.0.1:portXXX. But they will see only limited set of keys you manually added to this agent. And, as AllenLuce mentioned, they can't grab it, they only could use it for authentication while agent is running.
socat must be installed on remote host. But looks like it is possible to simply upload precompiled binary (I tested it on FreeBSD and it works).
No automation: keys must be added manually via ssh-add, forwarding requires 2 extra processes (socat) to be run, multiple ssh connections must be managed manually.
So, this answer is probably just a proof of concept and not a production solution.
Let's see how it can be done.
Instruction
Client side (where ssh-agent is running)
Run new ssh-agent. It will be used for keys you want to see on remote host only.
$ ssh-agent # below is ssh-agent output, DO NOT ACTUALLY RUN THESE COMMANDS BELOW
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-qVnT0UsgV6yO/agent.22982; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=22983; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
It prints some variables. Do not set them: you will loose your main ssh agent. Set another variable with suggested value of SSH_AUTH_SOCK:
SSH_AUTH_SECONDARY_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-qVnT0UsgV6yO/agent.22982
Then establish forwarding from some TCP port to our ssh-agent socket locally:
PORT=9898
socat TCP4-LISTEN:$PORT,bind=127.0.0.1,fork UNIX-CONNECT:$SSH_AUTH_SECONDARY_SOCK &
socat will run in background. Do not forget to kill it when you're done.
Add some keys using ssh-add, but run it with modified enviromnent variable SSH_AUTH_SOCK:
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$SSH_AUTH_SECONDARY_SOCK ssh-add
Server side (remote host)
Connect to remote host with port forwarding. Your main (not secondary) ssh agent will be used for auth on hostA (but will not be available from it, as we do not forward it).
home-host$ PORT=9898 # same port as above
home-host$ ssh -R $PORT:localhost:$PORT userA#hostA
On remote host establish forwarding from ssh-agent socket to same TCP port as on your home host:
remote-host$ PORT=9898 # same port as on home host
remote-host$ mkdir -p $HOME/tmp
remote-host$ SOCKET=$HOME/tmp/ssh-agent.socket
remote-host$ socat UNIX-LISTEN:$SOCKET,fork TCP4:localhost:$PORT &
socat will run in background. Do not forget to kill it when you're done. It does not automatically exit when you close ssh connection.
Connection
On remote host set enviromnent variable for ssh to know where agent socket (from previous step) is. It can be done in same ssh session or in parallel one.
remote-host$ export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$HOME/tmp/ssh-agent.socket
Now it is possible to use secondary agent's keys on remote host:
remote-host$ ssh userB#hostB # uses secondary ssh agent
Welcome to hostB!
The keys themselves are not shared by forwarding your agent. What's forwarded is the ability to contact the ssh-agent on your local host. Remote systems send challenge requests through the forwarding tunnel. They do not request the keys themselves.
See http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/ssh-agent-forwarding.html#fwd for a graphical explanation.

How should my local server communicate with an EC2 server?

I have a node.js server running on ec2. I'd like for that server to automatically push data to another node.js server that is running on my laptop.
What is the best way to do something like this?
You could use a service like showoff.io to create an entry point to access your local laptop, or you could just create an SSH tunnel by running this command on your laptop:
ssh -R port:localhost:remoteport ec2-host
That will allow port on the loopback interface of your EC2 server to connect to remoteport on your laptop.
Then just modify your code to connect to the node.js program running on your laptop via the IP of 127.0.0.1 and port of port.
You could have the EC2 node.js call a function from the local node.js, and pass the data as variables

Problem with access to Mongodb on Amazon EC2

i've got another question for you.
I have Amazon EC2 instance with mondodb installed.
It works great except one thing - i can't access (connect to) it from outside (my PC).
I think the problem with Security Groups. It's some sort of default firewall.
Does anyone know how to configure EC2 instance to have access to mongodb?
Thanks in advance.
Think carefully before doing this. If you open the ports, make sure you restrict the IP numbers that can access it, otherwise anyone will be able to access your database. You can enable authentication in MongoDB, but it's not particularly safe, just a username and password. You should not have your database open to the internet, it is not a good idea.
A better way than opening up ports in the EC2 firewall is to open an SSH tunnel an forward the port, this makes sure that only you can access the database, and only while the SSH tunnel is active.
Open up a new terminal and run this command (replacing user and host with the user you use when SSH'ing to your server and the name of the server):
ssh user#host -N -L 27017:127.0.0.1:27017
The command will forward the port 27017 on your computer to the same port on the server. To connect to the MongoDB instance simply run mongo in a terminal (if that doesn't work, try mongo --host 127.0.0.1 or even mongo --host 127.0.0.1 --port 27017).
If you run MongoDB on your local machine you will have to change the first port, since the local server is already using it. In that case run this command instead:
ssh user#host -N -L 27018:127.0.0.1:27017
and then connect with
mongo --port 27018
(possibly adding --host 127.0.0.1 if it doesn't work).
When you're done working with the database, exit mongo and press ctrl-C in the terminal with the SSH command.
You need to add a security group exception for the port 27017 if you are using default config for you to access it from outside. For security group configuration, please check the amazon EC2 documentation. And if you are using a different port on Mongo, change the security group port accordingly.
--Sai
Is your EC2 instance a Windows server by any chance? If so, in addition to EC2's Security Groups you also need to configure Windows Firewall to allow the incoming connection.
Go To Administrative Tools, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, and configure a new Rule that allows incoming connections on port 27017 (the default mongo port) or whatever port you've chosen.

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