[How To] AFP via SSH Tunnel
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:24 am
I've been tooling around with tunneling protocols through an SSH pipe. Using an SSH tunnel means that only one port needs to be open on the firewall and other protocols tunnel through that port (good for security and simplicity) and it allows for easily and safely mount remote disks in Finder via AFP. You can do other fun things like securely access an insecure pop mail account, or pipe all of your traffic to an external server thereby avoiding local firewall rules and surveillance (good for work).
Once you dig into the man pages and examples it is pretty straight forward. But I didn't want to have to remount the tunnel with every login. Too much to remember. I looked at a few of the publicly available GUI tools. The two best (for OSX) that I've found are Meerkat (http://codesorcery.net/meerkat) and AlmostVPN (http://www.leapingbytes.com/almostvpn). Please let us know if you are using something better!
Meerkat is the more polished of the two but is limited in functionality. It automates the setup of basic tunnels but lacks advanced functionality. It also does not play nice with OSX 10.5. AlmostVPN is not as polished and the documentation is a bit lacking BUT it provides all kinds of configuration options. It supports nearly all of the switches and optimization rules available through the terminal commands. It took a bit of trial and error but eventually I got it going. It is well worth the effort if you are willing to put in a little work. Also, I've been in touch with the developer and future version is in the works.
Hope some of you find this useful.
Rory
Once you dig into the man pages and examples it is pretty straight forward. But I didn't want to have to remount the tunnel with every login. Too much to remember. I looked at a few of the publicly available GUI tools. The two best (for OSX) that I've found are Meerkat (http://codesorcery.net/meerkat) and AlmostVPN (http://www.leapingbytes.com/almostvpn). Please let us know if you are using something better!
Meerkat is the more polished of the two but is limited in functionality. It automates the setup of basic tunnels but lacks advanced functionality. It also does not play nice with OSX 10.5. AlmostVPN is not as polished and the documentation is a bit lacking BUT it provides all kinds of configuration options. It supports nearly all of the switches and optimization rules available through the terminal commands. It took a bit of trial and error but eventually I got it going. It is well worth the effort if you are willing to put in a little work. Also, I've been in touch with the developer and future version is in the works.
Hope some of you find this useful.
Rory