Getting Started with SSH

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A SSH tunnel consists of an encrypted tunnel created through a SSH protocol connection.

A SSH tunnel can be used to transfer unencrypted traffic over a network through an encrypted channel.

It can also be used in port forwarding.

If you need to access a port on your server which can only be accessed from localhost and not remotely, then SSH tunnel in such scenarios is a blessing.

An example here is when you need to connect to a database console, which only allows local connection for security reasons.

Let's check how this could be done.

On my remote server I will quickly install My SQL server.

I will now start My SQL service.

My SQL runs on port 3306. Let's verify that.

Ok, so our MySQL process is listening ok on port 3306.

I will now launch a GUI based MySQL client on my windows machine.

Under MySQL tab I will provide login details for my remote MySQL server.

Now from the SSH tab, I will enable tunneling.

Provide my remote Server IP address, Provide username and password for my remote server user.
connection will be successful.
Remember! if we don't enable SSH tunneling, then this GUI client will try to connect to MySQL server on my windows machine.

Now let’s stop here for a little bit and see what's going on.

In our example our GUI client is actually saying forward my local port 3306 to our remote server through port 22.

You can imagine SSH on your server actually making a connection, a tunnel, between those two ports, one on your local machine, and one on the remote server.

In next chapter let's see how we can install a SSH server as service.