SSH-Localhost

You can host a localhost of a remote server on your local machine using SSH. This is useful when you host a localhost on a remote server and you want to access it on your local machine. For example, when you execute Tensorboard on the remote server where you're training a model, it is hosted on the remote server's localhost. If you use SSH command, you can access it on your local machine and stop the connection when you don't need to access it anymore. But, this process is too complicated using SSH command. So, I implemented a simple script to do this.

Installation

If you have Rust installed on your machine, you can install the script using the following command:

cargo install --git https://github.com/DevSlem/ssh-localhost.git

If you don't have Rust installed, you can download the binary at Releases page and put it in your PATH.

Usage

Let's assume that you're executing Tensorboard on the remote server where the user name is testuser and the IP address is 123.456.789.0. The remote server's ssh port is open on 1234. Tensorboard is hosted on the remote server's localhost port 6006 (Tensorboard default port). You want to access it on your local machine using port 4004. In this case, you can use the following command:

ssh-localhost -p 1234 testuser@123.456.789.0 6006 4004

Then, you can access it at the url http://localhost:4004 on your local machine.

Below is the help message of the script:

Host a localhost of a remote server to your local machine

Usage: ssh-localhost [OPTIONS] <DESTINATION> <REMOTE_PORT> [LOCAL_PORT]

Arguments:
  <DESTINATION>  SSH destination format: `[ADDRESS]` or `[USER]@[ADDRESS]` or `[USER]@[ADDRESS]:[SSH_PORT]`. If you don't specify a ssh port, it will default to 22
  <REMOTE_PORT>  Remote server's localhost port
  [LOCAL_PORT]   Local machine's port to host the remote server's localhost. Defaults to same as remote port

Options:
  -p <P>         SSH port of the remote server. Defaults to one specified in SSH config
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Note that If you don't specify [LOCAL_PORT], it will default to [REMOTE_PORT]. For example, ssh-localhost -p 1234 testuser@123.456.789.0 6006 is equivalent to ssh-localhost -p 1234 testuser@123.456.789.0 6006 6006.

You can simply stop the connection by pressing Ctrl+C.

SSH Config

If you already configured your SSH config file (e.g., ~/.ssh/config) like this:

Host testserver
  HostName 123.456.789.0
  User testuser
  Port 1234

then, you can easily access the remote server's localhost using the following simple command:

ssh-localhost testserver 6006

In this case, you don't need to specify user name, IP address, and SSH port.