SSHing for fun and profit

Sorry for the double post TUAW overlords.

I have to make a quick plug for my nearly-released SSH tunnel managing app, Meerkat:

http://codesorcery.net/meerkat/

You can check out some screenshots in these posts:

http://codesorcery.net/category/meerkat/

If anyone would like to test it and provide some useful feedback, I'd be happy to add you to the beta testing.

For those of you who don't like to fight with the terminal: Try Shimo 2.0 - it comes with full tunnel support with SSH!
--> http://www.nexumoja.org/projects/Shimo2/

Can you guys talk about how to do ssh tunneling for the apple vnc server? I just have it checked on and I can get to it with just the vnc password which I hear is very insecure. A simple step by step tutorial might help plenty of people out, especially those that are too lazy to figure it out :D

If you want something that'll really bake your noodle, you can use an SSH connection as a full SOCKS proxy to dodge frustrating port restrictions or just get yourself some easy encryption when you're surfing from public places. It's kinda like magic, but the cool kind, not the kind your great uncle does with the quarter.

ssh -D username@server

You've now got a SOCKS proxy running on your localhost:9999. Hicka bicka boo.

I gotta imagine that this is what our AppleMatters guy will get to in the end. He'll probably talk about specific port tunneling as well, which is also supremely useful, but the SOCKS proxy thing really shook the foundations of my worldview.

To follow-on to Aron T's comment, once you have ssh figured out you'll probably fall in love with sshfs. Basically, if you can ssh to a computer, then you can mount that computer as a drive on your Mac.

I'm a big fan of the MacFUSE sshfs which can be found here:

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/MACFUSE_FS_SSHFS

SSH FTW!

I use it daily - I have an automator workflow that I drop files onto which copies them to the downloads directory of my mac mini @home.

I also have an applescript to mount/unmount an sshfs volume on the same mac mini if I need read/write access.

Ps, One should also be compelled to visit here: http://tinyurl.com/5hlz9a (not blog spam, I promise) and look at the instructions for setting up keys and aliases so SSH'ing is as easy as "ssh server".

it took me a while to figure out what ssh really was and how to do it. yeah i know i know. i just heard misinformation that kept throwing me off.

this will be good for some.