SSH: Forwarding privileged ports

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SSH
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CLI
2017-10-13 · 1 min read

Let's assume you have an access to a machine aliased as tx2 in your .ssh/config

Host tx2
  Hostname 1.1.1.1
  User zaiste

Let's try to forward the port 80

ssh tx2 -L 80:localhost:80
Privileged ports can only be forwarded by root.

Let's try to overcome that with sudo

sudo ssh tx2 -L 80:localhost:80
ssh: Could not resolve hostname tx2: Name or service not known

tx2 is a host configured in root's ~/.ssh/config. This can be fixed with -F option.

sudo ssh -F ~/.ssh/config tx2 -L 80:localhost:80

This tries to connect as root user and prompts for a password.

We can use -l $USER (or explicitly -l zaiste) to set a proper user name. -E to sudo preserves the environment allowing a proper SSH agent to be used.

sudo -E ssh -F ~/.ssh/config -l $USER tx2 -L 80:localhost:80