Using SSH forwarding to connect to wwwstu.csci.viu.ca from home

• an ssh client that supports port forwarding; the default OpenSSH clients on Linux and other UNIX-alikes, including MacOS, do; so does 'PuTTY' on Windows

The basic idea is to create a listening point on your computer at home that gets "forwarded" over an SSH connection to the Computing Science login server, (typically) otter, and on to the web server, wwwstu.csci.viu.ca.

You connect to the login server using SSH, but include additional command line arguments to set up the "SSH tunnel" to the web server:

$ ssh -L 1234:wwwstu.csci.viu.ca:80 otter.csci.viu.ca
Debian GNU/Linux 8
Password: 
...
$

(Here, the 1234 is an unused 'port number' on your computer above 1023 - 1234 tends to work in most cases.) After logging in, on your computer you should now be able to access your web pages on the CSCI student web server with the following URL:

http://localhost:1234/~USERNAME/...

where USERNAME is your username and ... is the path to the specific page you want to access.

The SSH forwarding is active as long as the SSH connection persists.

The PuTTY SSH client allows port forwarding to be set up prior to opening the connection as follows (tested on Versions 0.67 [Windows 7] and 0.63 [Debian GNU/Linux 8 - Jessie]):

1. In the "Host Name (or IP Address)" box under "Session" section type: otter.csci.viu.ca, and make sure the "Connection type" is "SSH" and the "Port" is 22.
2. In the left pane of the "PuTTY Configuration" window, open the "Connection->SSH" options.
3. Click "Tunnels".
4. In the small data entry box labelled "Source port" under "Add new forwarded port:" type: 1234
5. In the slightly larger data entry box labelled "Destination" type: wwwstu.csci.viu.ca:80
6. Click the "Add" button. At this point, the following should appear in the large box under the label "Forwarded ports:" L1234 wwwstu.csci.viu.ca:80
7. [Optional] Save the connection configuration for later use.
8. Click the "Open" button and login to the server with your user name and password.

At this stage, you should be able to use your favourite browser to connect to your web pages with the URL from the previous section.