caarlos0 / xdg-open-svc

xdg-open as a service

xdg-open-svc

A simple service that you can run in your host, forward the socket over SSH, and use it to open URLs and etc from your target host.

How can I use this?

Basically, forward the socket to the target host:

Host myhost
  RemoteForward [localhost]:2226 [127.0.0.1]:2226

Then, run this service. You can run it as a native service, or just execute the binary.

Finally, SSH into the host:

ssh myhost

And you should be able to "remote open" using nc:

echo "https://carlosbecker.com" | nc localhost 2226

Making it better

I wrote an article about how I use this, along with pbcopy and pbpaste over SSH. You can read it here. It gives a few tips on how to make the experience better than using nc 😄

Alternatives

As pointed out by @pbnj on #1, you can also use ncat, which comes with the nmap package. There are a few subtle differences, like the lack of logging and listening to 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost, but they should work more or less the same apart from that.

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I hope you find this useful :)