When accessing web-based tools on servers that only allow ssh access, using SOCKS proxies and connecting a local browser to those are usually more efficient than doing X forwarding over ssh, especially when multiple ssh hops are necessary to reach the servers. As just locking your screen can have the adverse affect of killing your proxies, at least if you're working over some VPNs, it can still become annoying - hence the need to (re)open SOCKS proxies in a quick and easy manner. This repository offers a few bash scripts that allows exactly this.
In a Unix-like environment (Linux, MacOS...), this is most easily done in your private ssh configuration file, ~/.ssh/config. An example entry with a two-level jump:
Host socks-target
DynamicForward 6789
User admin
ProxyJump gateway-server
RequestTTY no
SessionType none
ForkAfterAuthentication yes
If you have keybased access properly setup and are using a key agent, this should open port 6789 on your localhost, and tunnel traffic to socks-target over gateway-server, accessing as user admin. As a bonus, it releases the terminal and skips unneeded session stuff. All without asking for passwords, yay! :-)
I've chosen to define my handful of SOCKS proxies all using the same portnumber, which has the drawback of only allowing one active proxy at a time. But as the scripts provided here helps you opening a SOCKS proxy really fast, swapping between them isn't really an issue anymore. And it makes the browser configuration simpler as well.
I've ended up using FireFox as a dedicated browser for accessing web resources via SOCKS, as it has a clean and simple setup for proxy use. Once configured for using my preferred port, it's done. Swapping proxies under FireFox's nose is something the browser is ignorant about, it will happily connect via whatever is at the other end of the configured SOCKS port.
A short bash script, using awk and some filters to list the host names of any SOCKS proxies you have defined locally.
The main bash script - it kills old sessions/processes for SOCKS proxies, and starts a new one on for the requested host, if the given host is a valid choice. In short, it matches your request with the output of find-socks-proxies.sh, and won't continue if your requested host isn't listed.
workstation:~ username$ socks-proxy.sh -h
Usage: socks-proxy.sh [OPTIONS]
Options:
-p <proxy-host> A defined proxy host (~/.ssh/config)
-v Verbose
-h Help
As a bonus, there's a completion script for bash - this completes options/flags as well as proxy hosts. This should be sourced before you try executing the main script, preferably in your bash login setup. Especially useful if you have a bunch of different hosts/proxies defined.
Move find-socks-proxies.sh and socks-proxy.sh into your $PATH, and put completion-socks-proxy.bash where it will be automatically sourced upon login.