tunneling support for PF_UNIX sockets

William Ahern william at 25thandClement.com
Tue Feb 6 08:00:44 EST 2007


On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 05:47:19PM +0200, Topi Rinkinen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been planning to develop a support for tunneling between "local_tcp
> => server_AF_UNIX".

http://www.25thandclement.com/~william/projects/streamlocal.html

> Questions:
> 
> 3. Is there a way to achieve same goals with current ssh version?

No. And extensive patching to OpenSSH is required for AF_UNIX because the
codebase assumes AF_INET or AF_INET6 at every single point, and it assumes
in such a way that precludes easy integration of AF_UNIX.

> 4. Is there a reason not to do this?

1) It took a ton of work.

2) So much work the OpenSSH folks haven't even cared to look into it my
patch, let alone hold out the chance for integration into the trunk.

> 5. Is there a already available naming convention to support different
> address families?

No. I used a square brace ('[') convention, and re-wrote the option parser
for addresses.

> Quick_n_dirty way would be prefixing host_address with some predefined

Nope. The addresses are sent across the wire in a fixed format which
precludes use of the relatively free-form AF_UNIX paths.

- Bill


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