From: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:36:04 +0000 (-0400)
Subject: Add SOCKS post.
X-Git-Url: http://git.tremily.us/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=9f87793f827a6d8dfd54a1df1e1db4947f8f0119;p=blog.git

Add SOCKS post.
---

diff --git a/posts/SOCKS.mdwn b/posts/SOCKS.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0af84ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/posts/SOCKS.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+Many journal articles are not freely available, but require some kind
+of Drexel subscription.  Usually, they will seem free when you connect
+from a Drexel IP address, but when you connect from home you have to
+go through the whole rigmarole with Drexel Library's SFX doodad to get
+your article.  What a pain.  I had previously [[SSH]] tunneled my X
+server out to newton, and fired up Firefox on newton.  Not much
+better, since tunneling Firefox is *slow*.  [w3m][] is faster, but
+without good JavaScript support a lot of “modern” sites leave you
+without much functionality.  I discovered a neat solution courtesy of
+[Carthik][].
+
+You can get around the drag of forwarding X from newton, and just
+forward the webpages directly by setting up a [SOCKS][] proxy with
+[[SSH]].  This is done in a number of possible ways through SSH, but
+the following two lines are the most common.  If you want to simply
+carry the connection through without a shell opening:
+
+    $ ssh -fND localhost:9999 you@newton.physics.drexel.edu
+
+if you want to open a tunnel and a shell at the same time, you could run:
+
+    $ ssh -D localhost:9999 you@newton.physics.drexel.edu
+
+Now port 9999 on your computer takes you to a SOCKS proxy on Newton.
+Open Firefox on your home computer and set it up to use the proxy with
+
+    Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings -> Manual Proxy Configuration
+
+And enter `localhost` and `9999` in the `SOCKS Host` fields.  Click
+`OK` and you're done.
+
+For bonus points, you can also make your DNS queries from Newton by
+entering
+
+    about:config
+
+in Firefox's URL field, and setting
+
+    network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
+
+to `true`.
+
+If you're tunneling your DNS queries, you can also use this method to
+access services otherwise screened by intervening firewalls.  For
+example, I can log in from home to check the status of our lab's
+[[chemical inventory|ChemDB]], but the only port our router needs to
+expose to incoming connections is for SSH.
+
+[w3m]: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/
+[Carthik]: http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/
+[SOCKS]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS