So, you're no doubt begging for some more information about PuTTY, after yesterday's installment. I think it's about time I taught you a little lesson about port forwarding.
Say that you want to access a web page that's only available from the University. You have two options. You can either use applications on the remote machine (e.g. lynx or netscape, if you've worked out X-forwarding), or configure your machine to use the same proxy as the remote machine uses.
Of course, it's not just anybody that can access the University proxy - that could lead to some bad shenanigans. At this point, you should find out the name of the DCS proxy: as yesterday, I'm not going to tell you it. However, remember when you auto-configured Mozilla in the first lab (proxy.pac)? Again, if you don't, just pop over in the lab and ask me, or one of the alpha-geeks. (Of course, by "alpha-geek", I don't necessarily mean the person who's accidentally broken X and are scrabbling about at a shell, trying desperately to restart the machine. No names, of course.)
But I digress, make a note of the proxy address, and the port number, which is 8080, I don't mind telling you.
Now, fire up PuTTY, and load the saved session that you so-lovingly made last time. Click on the category "SSH/Tunnels", in the tree-view.
In the section, "Add a new forwarded port:", type the address of the proxy into the Destination box. It should be in the form
proxy.hostname:<portnumber>
where "proxy.hostname" is the address of the proxy, and "portnumber" is whatever the port number was (usually 8080, certainly 8080 in the Glasgow case).
For "Source Port", type in a number of an unused port on your machine. If this doesn't mean anything to you, you're probably not running any servers, and so 8080 wouldn't be a bad choice. I personally went for 8989, but that's just me.
Finally, hit "Add", then click on "Open" and connect as normal.
That's half the work done. You'll now find that the address 127.0.0.1:8989 (or whatever port) connects directly to the University proxy. All you need do now is set up the proxy in Internet Explorer (or your browser of choice).
In IE, go to the Tools menu, and click on "Internet Options...". Then click on the Connections tab, and click on your connection from the list (this presupposes you connect via dial-up networking; if you are on a LAN/Home Network, see below). Click on "Settings". Put a tick in the "Use a proxy..." checkbox, and enter "127.0.0.1" and "8989" (or whatever) in the "Address" and "Port" boxes, respectively. Now, you're good to go.
If you are using IE, and connected via a LAN, the same applies, except you click on "LAN Settings...", instead of "Settings".
The proxy will work for any application that reads IE's proxy settings, which happens to be most of them. If you're using Mozilla, you'll have to go into the Options dialog, and enter the proxy details under "Connection". But if you're using Mozilla, you probably already know that.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this latest foray into the world of SSH. Tune in next time for something interesting, or not.
Cheers,
Derek.
P.S. When you have this set up, all requests for webpages will be directed to the University proxy, and hence associated with your username. Obviously, any Acceptably Use Policy that you may have signed will apply to sites viewed while connected to the University proxy. So no horse porn, eh?
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