Localtunnel: Permit more than just HTTP?

[infodox]

An option to allow a direct socket connection would be nice, for example, if I wish to permit someone to access my box via SSH/FTP/whatever, being able to forward those protocols would be nice.

Have the default listener set to 80 on the localtunnel.me 'forwarded host' or whatever port works for you.

Just an idea, but it would be a very nice function :)

[defunctzombie]

Hm, not sure I want to go down this road of being just a generic open proxy to your box, although maybe it could be interesting. Are there any services that already do this?

[infodox]

None that I know of. Until now my only way was to have a box on the internet which I had SSH access to, and "GatewayPorts yes" in sshd_config on, and create a port-forward from 127.0.0.1:PORT_I_WANT_FORWARDED to 0.0.0.0:SOME_PORT on remote box.

Effectively this would be doing the same thing (without the hassle of needing a remote box under your control with a particular configuration), and permitting users of localtunnel to forward an arbritary port on their own box (Be it SSH, FTP, or whatever) to a port on whatever.localtunnel.me.

F.ex, you could add a --raw option.

"""
$ lt --raw --port 22 # here we are forwarding the SSH port
your port 22 is available at: gqgh.localtunnel.me:80 # (assuming we still use 80)
"""

This would make it a far more versatile utility IMO, as it would allow just about any protocol to be forwarded. You could even forward HTTP over this, deprecating current HTTP forward (or making it an optional method)

[defunctzombie]

Can't support this with the current schemes because of how we interact with http connections. Would be happy to entertain this if you create a working version of client and server but I don't have the time right now and the tool is not geared towards that use case.

[acrogenesis]

ngrok does permit tcp connections

[defunctzombie]

I am not against it but don't have the time to look into what it would take
to accomplish it. I also don't view it as a priority since it is not the
main focus of this tool.

On Thursday, August 6, 2015, Adrian Rangel [email protected] wrote:

ngrok does permit tcp connections

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel/issues/23#issuecomment-128481082
.

[jamesokbo]

Just to be clear, Websockets are still not supported on the hosted server, right? Sorry if they aren't... I've been looking for a service that does this for quite some time now, since I don't have the time to code it (or better yet, to learn how to code it and then do it) myself either...
I do believe this kind of service would open a door to bidirectional communications between local devices. I know there are some services that offer this, Ngrok is one of them, but their payment plans don't seem right for what I need...

[defunctzombie]

@jamesokbo websockets should be supported just fine on the hosted server. If they are not, it is likely a bug.

[jamesokbo]

Was this recently implemented? :)

[defunctzombie]

No, iirc websocket support has existed for a while

[jamesokbo]

lol ok! thank you very much, I'll try it as soon as I can

[qm3ster]

Please consider the goats:

Server:

#!/bin/sh
killall chisel lt
sudo systemctl start ssh
chisel server --port 9022 &
lt --port 9022 --subdomain extreme-subdomain-alpha &
wait

```bash
killall chisel lt
sudo systemctl stop ssh

### Client:
```bash
#!/bin/sh
killall chisel
chisel client extreme-subdomain-alpha.localtunnel.me 3022:22 &
ssh username@localhost -p 3022 &
wait

No, performance isn't great.
But it's not necessarily as bad as you think.
Latency is bad, but throughput is okay.

chisel is a TCP-over-websocket from here: https://github.com/jpillora/chisel