Linux network geekery assistance requested!

[thewayne]

For my linux geeks out there, I want to do something and need some help.

I have a hosting service that is, IIRC, running Red Hat. I want to create, I believe, a proxy server with SSH so that I can go from my Mac via whatever network through an encrypted tunnel to my personal site and from there, anywhere I want. Basically I want to be able to post to my LJ, browse for jobs, whatever, without the network I'm on wherever I'm at being able to monitor what I'm doing.

Comments

[chirssly.livejournal.com]

What I do is a little different than you describe, but I think it solves your problem and it's a lot easier to set up.

What I did was set up my hosting service to tell me which computer to SSH to. I don't proxy; I SSH home directly. The setup is a lot easier.

Hosting setup:

I made a simple web page on my hosting service that records the IP address of the last computer to hit it. Then I made a separate web page that displays that address.

Home setup

After opening up the SSH ports on my router, I set up a cron job on my home computer to ping the recording web page (in case of dynamic IP changes). I set that up in Linux so I could use wget, but you can ping the web page with perl.

When I want to use my home network all I have to do is look at the web page to get the right IP and I SSH as normal.