Bdtyktl

I want to set up a Raspberry Pi on my home network that I can use as a socks proxy from work or other location (parents' house). In other words, I want to navigate the web and have it appear that it's happening from my home network regardless of where I'm connecting from.

I know this question has been asked multiple times, but I just can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong or missing.

I am close to making it work, but after hours and hours of searching and trying, I can't quite put it all together.

Here's what I have so far.

RPi at home ----> Linux VPS <----- me, on windows box

From the RPI, I issue the command:

ssh -f -N -T -R 2210:localhost:22 me@myVPS.com

This appears to set up the reverse tunnel on the VPS (I can see it listening on port 2210 on the VPS):

tcp  0   0 0.0.0.0:2210      0.0.0.0:*         LISTEN

From my local windows workstation, I can use Putty to ssh into the Linux VPS and issue:

ssh -p 2210 RPi-account@localhost

or

ssh -l RPi-account -p 2210 localhost

I have keys set up on the RPI and the VPS so they can log into each other without a password.

This connects me from my windows workstation through the VPS to the RPI and I'm able to get an SSH connection to the RPi, but the socks proxy isn't working.

What I cannot figure out is how to configure the SSH command from the VPS and also Putty on my workstation to make this connection and pass the socks connection through the RPI so I can browse. I have tried many combinations of SSH tunnel configs in Putty (port forwarding, dynamic ports), but the best I can do is get a socks proxy connection that goes out to the Net from the Linux VPS (the mid-point).

From the VPS, I've tried:

ssh -p 2210 -D 8888 RPi-account@localhost

and then from Putty on my workstations I set up the connection to the VPS with a tunnel like this:

L50000 127.0.0.1:8888

setting the socks proxy locally to 127.0.0.1 port 50000 doesn't give the browser access to the outside world.

What am I missing to allow me to socks proxy from my local workstation to the VPS and chain it to and through the RPi?

Thanks!

You don't want the SOCKS proxy on the Linux VPS, you want it on the Windows machine. You can use a regular port forwarding to another regular port forwarding, but you can't use a SOCKS forwarding to another SOCKS forwarding.

The simple solution is to use Putty to connect to Linux-VPS at port 2210 while creating a SOCKS tunnel in Putty. The connection to Linux-VPS:2210 will be forwarded to your PI, so connections to the SOCKS port will be forwarded to the PI.

A regular forwarding to a SOCKS forwarding, as you described, should also work, but is more complicated. You should verify that the second SSH connection from the VPS to the PI is really established and has port 8888 open.

Edit

The reverse forwarding you create with the SSH connection from the PI to the VPS means that a SSH connection to Linux-VPS:2210 is the same as a connection to PI:22, except that you can't use the latter because of firewall/routing limitations.

So in Unix terms, you just need to connect to the PI (via VPS) and make the port forwarding:

ssh -D 50000 -p 2210 RPi-account@Linux-VPS

This is equivalent to

ssh -D 50000 -p 22 RPi-account@PI

As you use Putty, you configure host and port (Linux-VPS:2210) in the Session tab, the username (RPi-account) in "Connection->Data" and the port forwarding on "Connection->SSH->Tunnels". You enter source port 50000, destination is empty, and select dynamic and auto, then press Add. The forwarding should be listed as D50000. You may also want to configure a key for automatic login to the PI. Your VPS doesn't need a key to the PI for this to work.