On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 11:32:00PM -0600, Ryan Thompson wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have a FreeBSD server behind NAT (on an RFC1918 address). The NAT
> machine is actually an NT box on a network we don't have access to.
> (So, it is not possible, for instance, to set up port based NAT for
> inbound SSH, which is one of two things I'd normally do). The server
> can, however, initiate arbitrary outbound connections.
>
> So, I'm fishing for a tech workaround to this management problem. :-)
>
> I need to be able to have an interactive SSH session on the server
> (Server) from another host (Manager) on the Internet (for remote
> management). That is, I need to connect to Server to do remote
> management.
>
> <--- NAT --->
> [ Server ] --- [ NT Gateway ] --- { Internet } --- [ Manager ]
> 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.1 207.1.1.1
> 24.1.1.1
>
> Manager is a highly available FreeBSD server (i.e., static public IP).
>
> The first thing that comes to mind is some kind of "pull" technique to
> have *Server* initiate the connection. Server already initiates cron'd
> SSH connections to Manager to do automated backup/rsync tasks, but I
> can't think of a way to actually start an interactive login in that
> manner.
>
> So far the best I've come up with is to configure a secure known path
> on Manager for batch scripts (so, not really interactive, but close
> enough for 90% of tasks) and have Server simply attempt to scp (pull)
> the file at regular intervals, and execute its contents. Server can
> capture the output and scp (push) that back to Manager. Manager never
> actually initiates anything. Obviously, this will be a leading cause
> of ass pain in troubleshooting scenarios, and will be a *real* pain
> for anything that actually requires an interactive session.
>
> Unfortunately, that idea has, so far, been the *last* thing to come to
> mind. Any *other* ideas? :-)
>
> Thanks,
> - RyanCould you have Server start an xterm, or similar, and have it send the display to Manager - with something like 'xterm -display Manager:0' from Server? This is assuming that you are running X on Manager. Nathan -- GPG Public Key ID: 0x4250A04C gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 4250A04C http://63.105.21.156/gpg_nkinkade_4250A04C.asc
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