What is the purpose of netcat's "-w timeout" option when ssh tunneling?
Posted
by
jrdioko
on Server Fault
See other posts from Server Fault
or by jrdioko
Published on 2012-09-03T18:35:35Z
Indexed on
2012/09/04
3:39 UTC
Read the original article
Hit count: 528
I am in the exact same situation as the person who posted another question, I am trying to tunnel ssh connections through a gateway server instead of having to ssh into the gateway and manually ssh again to the destination server from there. I am trying to set up the solution given in the accepted answer there, a ~/.ssh/config
that includes:
host foo
User webby
ProxyCommand ssh a nc -w 3 %h %p
host a
User johndoe
However, when I try to ssh foo
, my connection stays alive for 3 seconds and then dies with a Write failed: Broken pipe
error. Removing the -w 3
option solves the problem. What is the purpose of that -w 3
in the original solution, and why is it causing a Broken pipe
error when I use it? What is the harm in omitting it?
© Server Fault or respective owner