Create a SOCKS proxy with SSH tunneling
Posted on August 7, 2008
Filed Under Browsers, Internet, Linux, Output, Ubuntu |
Recently I needed a good secure socks proxy which I can use to brose my sites from another IP/country. That way I can see what search engines show to the users outside my country and how the advertisements on my sites are shown to my target audience.
Another trick you may use socks proxy for is to browse sites that are restricted to their country of origin.
I like to test the GeoIP library from a proxy too.
In my situation I’ve had a VPS account with ssh access to it in another country. I needed to create a tunnel through that VPS and browse the Internet from there. One way to do that is to use VNC and open the remote desktop on the remote machine and do whatever you want from there. But my situation was different because of the lack of a desktop on the remote machine and it’s limited memory and CPU power.
So I’ve done the following.
Open a console in my localhost Linux box and typed:
ssh -C username@remotehost.com -D 8080
or
ssh -C username@remotehost.com -L 8080:*:*
Whatever works for you.
Then I opened my Firefox and in the FoxyProxy extension I used localhost:8080 as my proxy. It’s a must that you check the SOCKS proxy check box there.
The next thing is just to browse your pages like everytime you’ve done it: through your local browser!
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