ssh: check if a tunnel is alive

Question

I have written a small bash script which needs an ssh tunnel to draw data from a remote server, so it prompts the user:

echo "Please open an ssh tunnel using 'ssh -L 6000:localhost:5432 example.com'"

I would like to check whether the user had opened this tunnel, and exit with an error message if no tunnel exist. Is there any way to query the ssh tunnel, i.e. check if the local port 6000 is really tunneled to that server?

Answer 1

#!/bin/bash

# Check do we have tunnel to example.com server
lsof -i tcp@localhost:6000 > /dev/null

# If exit code wasn't 0 then tunnel doesn't exist.
if [ $? -eq 1 ]
then
  echo ' > You missing ssh tunnel. Creating one..'
  ssh -L 6000:localhost:5432 example.com
fi

echo ' > DO YOUR STUFF < '

Answer 2

Autossh is best option - checking process is not working in all cases (e.g. zombie process, network related problems)

example:

autossh -M 2323 -c arcfour -f -N -L 8088:localhost:80 host2

Answer 3

This is my test. Hope it is useful.

# $COMMAND is the command used to create the reverse ssh tunnel
COMMAND="ssh -p $SSH_PORT -q -N -R $REMOTE_HOST:$REMOTE_HTTP_PORT:localhost:80 $USER_NAME@$REMOTE_HOST"

# Is the tunnel up? Perform two tests:

# 1. Check for relevant process ($COMMAND)
pgrep -f -x "$COMMAND" > /dev/null 2>&1 || $COMMAND

# 2. Test tunnel by looking at "netstat" output on $REMOTE_HOST
ssh -p $SSH_PORT $USER_NAME@$REMOTE_HOST netstat -an | egrep "tcp.*:$REMOTE_HTTP_PORT.*LISTEN" \
   > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
   pkill -f -x "$COMMAND"
   $COMMAND
fi

Answer 4

Netcat is your friend:

nc -z localhost 6000 || echo 'no tunnel open'