The server I needed to get to was only accessible via the host. So I had to ssh to the host and then from the host to the server I needed to get into. The ssh process was a little annoying so I found a better way to jumpbox.
Setup
On my current laptop I have an ssh config for ssh’ing into my server at home. The ssh config looks like (don’t mind the X11 stuff. I use it for graphical applications when I have to.):
host xps
HostName 192.168.1.136
port 22
User jack
IdentityFile /Users/Jack/.ssh/id_rsa
ForwardAgent yes
ForwardX11 yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes
And then on my XPS server I have a configuration file to ssh to guest OS’s which looks like the following:
Host pbox
Hostname 10.0.0.141
IdentityFile /home/jack/.ssh/id_rsa
user jack
I wanted to skip the extra command at the XPS prompt to ssh into the projectbox. I’m all about efficiency. I tried multiple different ssh commands including passing the -J flag, using -o ProxyCommand="" and none of it seemed to work.
After googling around a bit I found some guys blog post and he reccommended chaining the command.
ssh -A -t xps ssh -A pbox
Sure enough its exactly what I wanted. This is how it works:
1) Connect to the jump-host: ssh -A -t xps
2) Execute Command ssh -A pbox
The -t flag forces the xps host to allocate a psuedo tty.